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Spherulites and thundereggs from pitchstones of the Deccan Traps: geology, petrochemistry, and emplacement environments

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Abstract

Spherulites and thundereggs are rounded, typically spherical, polycrystalline objects found in glassy silicic rocks. Spherulites are dominantly made up of radiating microscopic fibers of alkali feldspar and a silica mineral (commonly quartz). They form due to heterogeneous nucleation in highly supercooled rhyolitic melts or by devitrification of glass. Associated features are lithophysae (“stone bubbles”), which have an exterior (sometimes concentric shells) of fine quartz and feldspar, and internal cavities left by escaping gas; when filled by secondary silica, these are termed thundereggs. Here, we describe four distinct occurrences of spherulites and thundereggs, in pitchstones (mostly rhyolitic, some trachytic) of the Deccan Traps, India. The thundereggs at one locality were previously misidentified as rhyolitic lava bombs and products of pyroclastic extrusive activity. We have characterized the thundereggs petrographically and geochemically and have determined low contents of magmatic water (0.21–0.38 wt.%) in them using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. We consider that the spherulite-bearing outcrops at one of the localities are of lava flows, but the other three represent subvolcanic intrusions. Based on the structural disposition of the Deccan sheet intrusions studied here and considerations of regional geology, we suggest that they are cone sheets emplaced from a plutonic center now submerged beneath the Arabian Sea.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) grant SR/FTP/ES-19/2007, as well as the Industrial Research and Consultancy Centre (IIT Bombay) grant 09YIA001, to Sheth. The latter grant also supported Mohite for a 3-month period. Kshirsagar and Shaikh were supported by Ph.D. and M.Tech. studentships, respectively, from IIT Bombay. Seaman acknowledges support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (grant EAR-0549637) which funded the purchase of the FTIR spectrometer and microscope at the University of Massachusetts. We thank Dipak Gosain for valuable help during field work, the friendly children of Bhaguda village for showing us some of the thundereggs, Sudeshna Bhattacharyya and Shilpa Netrawali for laboratory assistance, and George Mathew, Kanchan Pande, and Liz Johnson for helpful discussions and comments. The manuscript greatly benefitted from careful, critical reviews by Jonathan Castro and an anonymous reviewer, the editorial handling of Donald Dingwell, as well as comments from James White.

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  1. Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), Powai, Mumbai, 400076, India

    Pooja V. Kshirsagar, Hetu C. Sheth, Badrealam Shaikh, Poonam Mohite, Trupti Gurav & D. Chandrasekharam

  2. Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA

    Sheila J. Seaman

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  1. Pooja V. Kshirsagar
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  2. Hetu C. Sheth
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Kshirsagar, P.V., Sheth, H.C., Seaman, S.J. et al. Spherulites and thundereggs from pitchstones of the Deccan Traps: geology, petrochemistry, and emplacement environments. Bull Volcanol 74, 559–577 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-011-0543-3

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