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Garnet peridotite from Colorado Plateau ultramafic diatremes: Hydrates, carbonates, and comparative geothermometry

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Abstract

Crystal fragments of pyrope from diatremes of ultramafic microbreccia in the Navajo Province of the Colorado Plateau contain inclusions of olivine, pyroxene, spinel, chlorite, amphibole, chlorapatite, and dolomite. The included suite supports earlier hypotheses that hydrous phases and carbonates were primary parts of some garnet peridotite assemblages in the Plateau lithosphere. Garnets with spinel and orthopyroxene inclusions likely all were sampled at pressures less than 36 kb and perhaps as low as 15–20 kb; no evidence was found for inclusions from greater depths. Temperature estimates are 800°–900° C for garnet-clinopyroxene equilibration, but only 500°–700° C for garnetolivine equilibration. Inherent differences between geothermometry methods account for only part of the discrepancy. Pronounced Fe-Mg zoning in garnet at olivine contacts and the lack of such zoning at clinopyroxene contacts are evidence that the difference in part relates to relative reequilibration rates with cooling. The garnet-olivine temperature estimates may be the best approximations to mantle temperatures before eruption. Our data are compatible both with the hypothesis that the garnet peridotite was emplaced in the mantle by large-scale, horizontal transport in the lithosphere and with the hypothesis that rocks were sampled from Precambrian lithosphere cooled to temperatures like those along a low heat flow geotherm. Discordances between the geothermometers here and in other lherzolite localities may be keys to evaluating tectonic histories of lherzolite masses.

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  1. W. Clay Hunter

    Present address: Climax Molybdenum Company, P.O. Box 579, 81224, Crested Butte, Colorado, USA

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  1. Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas, 78712, Austin, Texas, USA

    W. Clay Hunter & Douglas Smith

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  1. W. Clay Hunter
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Hunter, W.C., Smith, D. Garnet peridotite from Colorado Plateau ultramafic diatremes: Hydrates, carbonates, and comparative geothermometry. Contr. Mineral. and Petrol. 76, 312–320 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00375458

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