Abstract
Clinopyroxene-rich, poorly metasomatised spinel lherzolites are rare worldwide but predominate among xenoliths in five Quaternary basaltic eruption centres in Tariat, central Mongolia. High-precision analyses of the most fertile Tariat lherzolites are used to evaluate estimates of primitive mantle compositions; they indicate Mg#PM = 0.890 while lower Mg# in the mantle are likely related to metasomatic enrichments in iron. Within a 10 × 20 km area, and between ~45 and ≥60 km depth, the sampled xenoliths suggest that the Tariat mantle does not show km-scale chemical heterogeneities and mainly consists of residues after low-degree melt extraction at 1–3 GPa. However, accessory (<1%) amphibole and phlogopite are unevenly distributed beneath the eruption centres. Ca abundances in olivine are controlled by temperature whereas Al and Cr abundances also depend on Cr/Al in coexisting spinel. Comparisons of conventional and high-precision analyses obtained for 30 xenoliths show that high-quality data, in particular for whole-rocks and olivines, are essential to constrain the origin of mantle peridotites.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to A. Hofmann, E. Takazawa and J.-L. Bodinier for support in Mainz, Niigata and Montpellier and thank T. Bradley, A. Friedrichsen, K. Furuta, N. Groschopf, A. Gurenko, D. Kuzmin, C. Lawson, C. Merlet, N. Pearson, A. Sobolev for analytical and technical assistance and advice. Altantsetseg, Boyar, Chimid, A. Goreglyad, W. Griffin, V. Kovalenko, S. O’Reilly participated in field work. The research was supported by funding from the Soviet-Mongolian Geologic Expedition (defunct), Australian Research Council (including Australian Research Fellowship and Grants to DAI), Australian Academy of Sciences, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Max-Planck-Society (Germany) and French CNRS (UMR 5568 and 6524). I thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor for helpful comments.
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Ionov, D.A. Compositional variations and heterogeneity in fertile lithospheric mantle: peridotite xenoliths in basalts from Tariat, Mongolia. Contrib Mineral Petrol 154, 455–477 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00410-007-0203-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00410-007-0203-y