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Origin of potassic postcollisional volcanic rocks in young, shallow, blueschist-rich lithosphere

Potassium-rich volcanism occurring throughout the Alpine-Himalayan belt from Spain to Tibet is characterized by unusually high Th/La ratios, for which several hypotheses have brought no convincing solution. Here, we combine geochemical datasets from potassic postcollisional volcanic rocks and lawson...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wang, Yu, Foley, Stephen F., Buhre, Stephan, Soldner, Jeremie, Xu, Yigang
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8279503/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34261644
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abc0291
Descripción
Sumario:Potassium-rich volcanism occurring throughout the Alpine-Himalayan belt from Spain to Tibet is characterized by unusually high Th/La ratios, for which several hypotheses have brought no convincing solution. Here, we combine geochemical datasets from potassic postcollisional volcanic rocks and lawsonite blueschists to explain the high Th/La. Source regions of the volcanic melts consist of imbricated packages of blueschist facies mélanges and depleted peridotites, constituting a new mantle lithosphere formed only 20 to 50 million years earlier during the accretionary convergence of small continental blocks and oceans. This takes place entirely at shallow depths (<80 km) without any deep subduction of continental materials. High Th/La in potassic rocks may indicate shallow sources in accretionary settings even where later obscured by continental collision as in Tibet. This mechanism is consistent with a temporal trend in Th/La in potassic postcollisional magmas: The high Th/La signature first becomes prominent in the Phanerozoic, when blueschists became widespread.