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Inclusions in super-deep diamonds: windows on the very deep Earth

  • Earth and Materials Science
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Abstract

Diamonds are the deepest terrestrial materials that reach the Earth’s surface after a very long and complex travel through our Planet. In detail, these pure-carbon minerals might be formed at very variable depths in the mantle from about 120–250 km, so-called “lithospheric diamonds” or from about 300–1000 or more km, so-called “super-deep diamonds”. Both lithospheric and super-deep diamonds can transport minerals and/or fluid inclusions within them, which are real “fragments of deep Earth” allowing geologists to better understand how the Earth works at those great depths. Although super-deep diamonds only represent about 6% of the global diamond population, such special objects are extremely intriguing as they form at depths potentially even >1000 km in the mantle, opening new scenarios on what we knew about the interior of the Earth. This is why super-deep diamonds are among the most studied samples in mantle mineralogy. In this review, I will focus on the two most common mineral inclusions in super-deep diamonds, ferropericlase (Mg,Fe)O, and CaSiO3-walstromite, on the recent discovered hydrous ringwoodite Mg2SiO4 within a Brazilian diamond and on a new category of large diamonds, called CLIPPIR.

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Modified after McCammon (2001)

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Modified after Palot et al. (2016)

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Modified after Smith et al. (2016)

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks the European Research Council for supporting his research through the ERC Starting Grant INDIMEDEA (Agreement No. 307322) and two anonymous referees.

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  1. Dipartimento di Geoscienze, Università degli Studi di Padova, Via G. Gradenigo 6, 35131, Padua, Italy

    Fabrizio Nestola

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  1. Fabrizio Nestola
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Correspondence to Fabrizio Nestola.

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Nestola, F. Inclusions in super-deep diamonds: windows on the very deep Earth. Rend. Fis. Acc. Lincei 28, 595–604 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12210-017-0607-1

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