Journal article

Chlorine from the mantle: Magmatic halides in the Udachnaya-East kimberlite, Siberia

VS Kamenetsky, R Maas, MB Kamenetsky, C Paton, D Phillips, AV Golovin, MA Gornova

Earth and Planetary Science Letters | Published : 2009

Abstract

The Devonian Udachnaya-East pipe (Siberia) presents a rare example of exceptionally fresh kimberlite rocks, containing a rich assemblage of alkali carbonate, chloride and sulphate minerals in its groundmass. Accordingly, bulk groundmass compositions have unusually high concentrations of sodium and chlorine (up to 6 wt.% each), while water contents are very low. High Na2O and low H2O are inconsistent with currently accepted model kimberlite magma compositions; and high Na and Cl contents in the Udachnaya-East pipe have been ignored by the geoscience community, because of possibility of contamination from sedimentary crustal rocks. New textural evidence suggests that the chloride and alkali ca..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

We are indebted to Victor Sharygin who collected and supplied sample UV31k-05 and mineral analyses for this study. We thank J. Woodhead, P. Robinson, S. Gilbert, K. McGoldrick, K. Gomann, and L. Danyushevsky for analysing the sample and providing help with microbeam analyses. The results and ideas were discussed with many participants of the 9th InternationalKimberlite Conference. Inparticular, we are grateful to A. Chakhmouradian, G. Yaxley, R. Mitchell, O. Navon, A. Sobolev, S. Kostrovitsky, S. Tappe, S. Matveev, M. Kopylova, D. Green, O. Safonov, L. Heaman, Ya. Fedortchouk and I. Veksler for advice, moral support and friendly criticism. Reviews by Michel Grsgoire and an anonymous researcher, and editorial handling by Richard Carlson are greatly appreciated. The work was supported by an Australian Research Council Research and Professorial Fellowships and Discovery Grant to V.