Fossilized solidification fronts in the Bushveld Complex argue for liquid-dominated magmatic systems

Willem Kruger and Rais Latypov ()
Additional contact information
Willem Kruger: University of the Witwatersrand
Rais Latypov: University of the Witwatersrand

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Chemical differentiation of magma on Earth occurs through physical separation of liquids and crystals. The mechanisms of this separation still remain elusive due to the lack of information on solidification fronts in plutonic magmatic systems. Here, we present records of fossilized solidification fronts from massive magnetitites of the Bushveld Complex in South Africa, obtained by two-dimensional geochemical mapping on field outcrops. The chemical zoning patterns of solidification fronts indicate that nucleation and crystallization occur directly at the chamber floor and result in near-perfect fractionation due to convective removal of a compositional boundary layer from in situ growing crystals. Our data precludes the existence of thick crystal mushes during the formation of massive magnetitites, thus providing no support for the recent paradigm that envisages only crystal-rich and liquid-poor mushy reservoirs in the Earth’s crust.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16723-6 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16723-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16723-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().