Continental mantle signature of Bushveld magmas and coeval diamonds

Stephen H. Richardson () and Steven B. Shirey
Additional contact information
Stephen H. Richardson: University of Cape Town
Steven B. Shirey: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 5241 Broad Branch Road NW, Washington DC 20015, USA

Nature, 2008, vol. 453, issue 7197, 910-913

Abstract: The Bushveld complex: Diamonds point to mantle origin Over two billion years ago, the Bushveld Complex, the world's largest layered intrusion and platinum group element repository, was emplaced within the Kaapvaal craton of southern Africa, one of Earth's earliest surviving continental nuclei. The radiogenic Sr and Os isotope signatures of Bushveld ores are generally attributed to contamination by the continental crust, however the scale of the intrusion and its lateral homogeneity have been at odds with such a model. Steven Richardson and Stephen Shirey now show that sulphide inclusions in approximately 2-billion-year-old diamonds from opposite sides of the complex have initial Os isotope ratios even more radiogenic than those of Bushveld sulphide ore minerals. Sulphide Re-Os and silicate Sm-Nd and Rb-Sr isotope compositions indicate that components of the continental mantle most likely contributed to the genesis of both the diamonds and the Bushveld Complex. Coeval diamonds provide key evidence that the main source of Bushveld platinum group elements is the mantle rather than the crust.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07073 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nature:v:453:y:2008:i:7197:d:10.1038_nature07073

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

DOI: 10.1038/nature07073

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

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