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Boron and oxygen isotope evidence for recycling of subducted components over the past 2.5 Gyr

Nature volume 447, pages 702–705 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Evidence for the deep recycling of surficial materials through the Earth’s mantle and their antiquity has long been sought to understand the role of subducting plates and plumes in mantle convection. Radiogenic isotope evidence for such recycling remains equivocal because the age and location of parent–daughter fractionation are not known. Conversely, while stable isotopes can provide irrefutable evidence for low-temperature fractionation, their range in most unaltered oceanic basalts is limited and the age of any variation is unconstrained. Here we show that δ18O ratios in basalts from the Azores are often lower than in pristine mantle. This, combined with increased Nb/B ratios and a large range in δ11B ratios, provides compelling evidence for the recycling of materials that had undergone fractionation near the Earth’s surface. Moreover, δ11B is negatively correlated with 187Os/188Os ratios, which extend to subchondritic values1, constraining the age of the high Nb/B, 11B-enriched endmember to be more than 2.5 billion years (Gyr) old. We infer this component to be melt- and fluid-depleted lithospheric mantle from a subducted oceanic plate, whereas other Azores basalts contain a contribution from ∼3-Gyr-old melt-enriched basalt2. We conclude that both components are most probably derived from an Archaean oceanic plate that was subducted, arguably into the deep mantle, where it was stored until thermal buoyancy caused it to rise beneath the Azores islands ∼3 Gyr later.

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Figure 1: Oxygen isotope variation across the Azores platform.
Figure 2: Variation of B isotopes with other geochemical indices in the Azores.
Figure 3: Variation of Os isotopes with other geochemical indices in the Azores.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to N. Rogers, K. Martyn and D. McKenzie, who originally supplied us with the samples analysed in this study, and also to T. Plank for the high-precision Nb concentration data. J. Valley provided access to his O isotope facility. We thank B. Bourdon, J. Gill, M. Reagan and A. Lini for discussions. A review by E. Hauri helped to improve the manuscript. S. Turner is funded by an ARC Federation Fellowship. This is GEMOC publication 466.

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Author notes

  1. Ilya Bindeman

    Present address: Present address: Department of Geological Sciences, 1272 University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403, USA.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, GEMOC, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia,

    Simon Turner

  2. Istituto di Geoscienze e Georisorse, Via Moruzzi 1, 56147 Pisa, Italy,

    Sonia Tonarini

  3. Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wisconsin, 1215 West Dayton Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA,

    Ilya Bindeman

  4. National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, Virginia 22230, USA,

    William P. Leeman

  5. School of Geosciences, Monash University, PO Box 28E, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia,

    Bruce F. Schaefer

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Correspondence to Simon Turner.

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Turner, S., Tonarini, S., Bindeman, I. et al. Boron and oxygen isotope evidence for recycling of subducted components over the past 2.5 Gyr. Nature 447, 702–705 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05898

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