Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-r5zm4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-03T13:18:59.692Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Spinel-garnet Iherzolite nodules from alkaline-ultrabasic rocks of Jetty Peninsula (East Antarctica)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2004

A.V. Andronikov
Affiliation:
VNII Okeangeologya, 1 Maklina, Leningrad 190121, USSR

Abstract

The petrography and mineralogy of Iherzolite nodules from an intrusive body of alkaline-ultrabasic rocks on Jetty Peninsula. The nodules are massive with a porphyritic hypidiomorphic granular texture. The main rock-forming minerals are: olivine, pyroxene, garnet and chrome spinel. The nodules are coarse granular spinel-garnet Iherzolites that are chemically similar to pyrope peridotite from Krezemze, Czechoslovakia, and pyrope-bearing peridotite from alkaline ultrabasites of Yakutia, USSR. The Al2O3 content in enstaties and Ca/(Ca + Mg) ratio in co-existing chrome diopside suggest that equilibrium conditions of the mantle mineral assemblage are: T = 875–900°C, P = 20–24 kbar, conditions typical of the spinel-pyrope facies of the upper mantle. Depths of withdrawal of the inclusions do not exceed 60–75 km. Available age determinations of the intrusive alkaline-ultrabasic rocks (145–150 Ma) suggest that alkaline-ultrabasic magmatism and withdrawal of plutonic nodules were related to rifting which resulted in the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent in the late Mesozoic.

Type
Papers—Earth Sciences And Glaciology
Copyright
© Antarctic Science Ltd 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)