Mantle heterogeneities produced by open-system melting and melt/rock reactions in Patagonian extra-Andean backarc mantle (Paso de Indios, Argentina)

Abstract

The Eocene basaltic extrusions in the Paso de Indios region (Chubut-Argentina) are one manifestation of the extensional tectonism of the active margin of South America during the Cenozoic. Ultramafic xenoliths embedded in these volcanics are mainly harzburgites and lherzolites with subordinate pyroxenites, estimated equilibrium temperatures ranging from 853 ± 15 to 1057 ± 32 °C and pressures in the spinel stability field. Geochemical and modal evidences point to a multistage magmatic history with record of a last reactional open-system episode associated to the influx of adakitic-like melts in a orthopyroxene-rich, clinopyroxene-poor mantle column. The great variability of clinopyroxene modal and geochemical composition in a ~20 km2 area suggests extreme variability of the physical parameters connected to melt infiltration and melt/rock reactions processes at a very small scale superimposed on a mantle with an inherited meter scale heterogeneity. Variations in the melt influx rate and residual porosity of the mantle column produced different melt/rock reactions which could be summarized in two entangled main reaction pathways: 1) opx + cpx + melt1– > ol + melt2 and 2) opx + melt1– > cpx + ol + melt2. These reactions deeply modified the trace elements content of clinopyroxenes producing variable enrichments in LREEs and LILEs related to both chromatographic and pure incremental open system processes. Petrological evidence suggests that the last reactional process occurred in the spinel stability field overprinting a strongly depleted mantle that, in a previous stage, had experienced extreme depletion in the garnet stability field, possibly under hydrous conditions. The adakitic-like nature of the influxing melt associates this episode to the subduction system along the western margin of South America, active at least since Late Triassic times.