Petrogenesis of tholeiite associations in Kudi ophiolite (western Kunlun Mountains, northwestern China): implications for the evolution of back-arc basins

• DOI: 10.1007/s00410-002-0358-5
• Publication Date: 2010-09-30T21:33:09Z
• Authors: Zhihong Wang; Shu Sun; Jiliang Li; Quanlin Hou
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; 01 natural sciences; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

The Kudi ophiolite in the western Kunlun Mountains comprises harzburgites, dunites, cumulate dunites, cumulate pyroxenites and gabbros, diabase dikes, and pillow and massive lavas, and are fragments of a supra-subduction zone (SSZ) ophiolite from the Early Paleozoic. The extrusive rocks can be classified into three groups of tholeiites: back-arc basin (BAB) tholeiites, low-Ti island arc tholeiites (IAT), and LREE-enriched IAT, as shown by their distinctive geochemical characteristics. The SSZ-type mantle peridotites, the cumulate complex with arc tholeiite affinity, and BABB-type diabase dikes and basalts constitute an upper mantle and crustal section of a back-arc basin formed by coupling of MORB-type mantle upwelling with fluid efflux from slab devolatilization. The low-Ti IAT are characterized by low Ti and HFSE, and slightly U-shaped or LREE-depleted chondrite-normalized REE patterns, and represent melts derived from a depleted mantle source region (extraction of BABB magma) modified compositionally by fluids and/or melts from the subducting lithospheric slab during propagation and extension of the back-arc basin. We interpret the LREE-enriched IAT as products of closure of the back-arc basin because an interaction between the parental magma of this IAT and the mantle peridotites (formerly the upper mantle of the basin) in a newly formed mantle wedge had occurred.