La Réunion Island dunites as analogs of the Martian chassignites: Tracking trapped melts with incompatible trace elements
Résumé
Fractional crystallization of basalts produces a variety of ultramafic cumulates poor in incompatible elements. Inorder to discuss the effect of trapped liquids on the concentrations of incompatible elements in these cumulates,we studied a series of dunites and pyroxenites from the Piton de la Fournaise (La Réunion Island, Indian Ocean).These rocks have a high variability in the abundance of these elements, which is only partially explained by theirproportions of olivines and pyroxenes. Mass balance calculations indicate that≈0.25 to 1 wt% of trapped meltsare required to account for the budget of the highly incompatible element abundances such as U, Rb, Nb orlight Rare Earth Elements (REE). Using our results, we revisited the REE geochemistry of chassignites, a groupletof Martian meteorites. Chassignites are mineralogically, texturally and chemically very similar to the dunitesfrom La Réunion Island, which can be seen as very close terrestrial analogs. The variations of REE abundancesand ratios in Chassigny, one of the three known chassignites, can be explained by inhomogeneous distributionof trapped melts in this meteorite at the scale of the size of the fragments (typicallyb1 g) used for the chemicalanalyses. Using these variations, we deduced the shape of the REE pattern and abundances of the Chassigny par-ent melt.
Domaines
VolcanologieOrigine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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