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Modification of the lithospheric mantle by melt derived from recycled continental crust evidenced by wehrlite xenoliths in Early Cretaceous high-Mg diorites from western Shandong, China

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Abstract

This paper reports petrographic, mineral chemical, olivine oxygen isotopic, and whole-rock geochemical data for wehrlite xenoliths from the Early Cretaceous Tietonggou high-Mg diorites in western Shandong Province, in the eastern part of the North China Craton (NCC), and describes the origin of these wehrlites and the processes that affected the deep lithospheric mantle in this area. Wehrlite xenoliths are rounded and vary in size between 3 cm × 4 cm × 5 cm and 3 cm × 2 cm × 1 cm. Olivine within these xenoliths occurs as an isolated residual phase within clinopyroxene, has Fo contents between 89 and 91, and contains between 1414 and 3629 ppm Ni, similar to the values of olivine from peridotite xenoliths in the Cenozoic basalts of eastern China, but lower than the values of olivine from harzburgite xenoliths in the Early Cretaceous high-Mg diorites in western Shandong. In situ oxygen isotope analysis yielded δ 18O values of olivine from (6.03±0.33)‰ to (6.82±0.35)‰, averaging (6.5±0.4)‰; this is higher than typical mantle-derived olivine ((5.2±0.3)‰). Compared with clinopyroxenes from peridotite xenoliths in the Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic basalts, clinopyroxenes in the wehrlites contain relatively low concentrations of Na2O, TiO2, and Al2O3, high concentrations of CaO, and higher Mg# (91.2–94.1) and Ti/Eu ratios (2082–2845), being similar in composition to clinopyroxenes within harzburgite xenoliths in the Early Cretaceous high-Mg diorites. Clinopyroxenes from wehrlite xenoliths are characterized by low total REE abundance, enrichment in light REEs, and depletion in high field strength elements such as Nb, Ta, Zr, and Hf. Moreover, the 87Sr/86Sr, 143Nd/144Nd, and 187Os/188Os (125 Ma) ratios of these wehrlites vary from 0.70596 to 0.70737, 0.512181 to 0.512416, and 0.12661 to 0.57650, respectively. These data suggest that these wehrlite xenoliths were formed by modification of the lithospheric mantle by melts derived from recycled continental crust.

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  1. College of Earth Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun, 130061, China

    QunJun Zhou, WenLiang Xu, DeBin Yang, FuPing Pei & Wei Wang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    WenLiang Xu & Shan Gao

  3. State Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics, Northwest University, Xi’an, 710069, China

    HongLin Yuan

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Zhou, Q., Xu, W., Yang, D. et al. Modification of the lithospheric mantle by melt derived from recycled continental crust evidenced by wehrlite xenoliths in Early Cretaceous high-Mg diorites from western Shandong, China. Sci. China Earth Sci. 55, 1972–1986 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-012-4533-x

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