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Genesis of Central Indian Ocean basin seamounts: morphological, petrological, and geochemical evidence

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Abstract

We present the petrological investigation carried out of the seamounts located between water depths of 4300 and 5385 m in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB). The seamounts have variable shapes (conical and elongated) and heights (625–1200 m). The basalts have a glassy veneer that forms the outer rind, while the holocrystalline interior shows variable textures. The basalts are plagioclase phyric and compositionally have low FeO* (8.0–10.5 wt%) and TiO2 (1.3–2.0 wt%), and variable K2O (0.1–1.0 wt%) contents and are slightly enriched in the light rare-earth elements. These characteristics are similar to the basalts from the CIOB seafloor and the Central Indian and Southeast Indian Ridges. These facts attest to the simultaneous formation of the CIOB seafloor and associated seamounts that shared a common source between 56 and 51 Ma when the spreading (half) rate was 95 mm/year. Similar to the East Pacific Rise (EPR), the source melt was perhaps ferrobasalts which over a period of time fractionated to N-MORB during the emplacement of the seamounts. The production of the seamounts may have involved a periodic tapping of a regularly replenished and shallow seated source melt. These basalts from the older seamounts of the CIOB are analogous to their present-day counterparts that form at the fast-spreading EPR and other locales in the world oceans.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Sunil Kumar Singh, The Director, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)–NIO for permission to publish this paper. The rocks were collected under the project, “Surveys for Polymetallic Nodules” funded by the Ministry of Earth Sciences, New Delhi. We thank the Captains, crew, and colleagues who helped during the rock dredging operations that were carried out onboard several ships. A part of this work formed the doctoral thesis of PD and was funded by an CSIR Research Fellow (2002–2009). The rocks were analyzed at CSIR-National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad India and Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun India. We are indebted to Dr. V. Yatheesh who took time off from his hectic preparations to go on a geophysical cruise and painstakingly prepared Fig. 1 at a short notice. We appreciate the critical and thorough reviews received from Drs. W. Geissler and T. Hansteen, which helped to improve the quality of the presentation. We acknowledge Drs. C. Breitkreuz (handling editor) and Wolf-Christian Dullo (Editor-in-Chief) for the corrections and encouragement to revise the manuscript. This is NIO’s contribution 6206.

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  1. CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography, Dona Paula, Goa, 403 004, India

    Sridhar D. Iyer & Ankeeta Ashok Amonkar

  2. Department of Applied Geology, Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad, Jharkhand, 826004, India

    Pranab Das

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Iyer, S.D., Amonkar, A.A. & Das, P. Genesis of Central Indian Ocean basin seamounts: morphological, petrological, and geochemical evidence. Int J Earth Sci (Geol Rundsch) 107, 2517–2538 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00531-018-1612-z

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