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Rhyolites contaminated with metapelite and gabbro, Lipari, Aeolian Islands, Italy: products of lower crustal fusion or of assimilation plus fractional crystallization?

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Abstract

Pleistocene lavas from Monte S. Angelo and Chiesa Vecchia volcanoes on Lipari contain two suites of inclusions. A metapelitic suite consists of gneisses and granulites with combinations of cordierite, garnet, corundum, hercynite, andalusite, sillimanite, orthopyroxene, ilmenite, magnetite, biotite, plagioclase, and quartz. A gabbroic suite has cumulus texture and contains plagioclase, orthopyroxene, clinopyroxene, and magnetite. All megacryst phases in the lavas appear to be derived from rock fragments, with the exception of euhedral strongly zoned calcic plagioclase, and none has grown by homogeneous nucleation from liquid represented by the groundmass, which is peraluminous rhyolite (>70 wt% SiO2, >6 wt% K2O). Ground-mass microcrysts were nearly all derived from disaggregated metapelites; overgrowths of alkali feldspar on plagioclase and of orthopyroxene on clinopyroxene, and quartz intergrown with alkali feldspar, are the only phases that grew from the rhyolitic liquid. Euhedral cordierite, hercynite, and plagioclase at the margins of some rock fragments grew by reaction of metapelite with liquid.

For grains in contact within metapelite inclusions, geothermometers and geobarometers yield estimates of equilibration conditions in the range of 800±100° C and 5±1 kbar. Compositions of phases in the same thin section, but not in the same inclusion, yield broadly erratic P and T estimates indicating disequilibrium among metapelite inclusions. Pyroxene thermometry in the gabbro suite indicates a crystallization temperature of 1020±50° C and a lack of subsequent thermal equilibration with the rhyolitic liquid.

The metapelite suite may partly be restite, but much is xenolithic, derived from a vertical interval of perhaps several kilometers, and may have undergone a much earlier episode of melting. The gabbro fragments are accidental xenoliths incorporated as the magma rose. Contaminants (metapelite and gabbro) account for 50 vol.% of the lavas, and cause them to be classified as “high-K andesite” according to whole-rock major element analysis.

The rhyolitic liquid may have originated by partial fusion of metapelites in the lower crust, or by fractional crystallization of mafic mantle-derived magma combined with assimilation of metapelite; the bulk of the evidence favors assimilation-fractional crystallization. Miocene and younger metapelite-contaminated rhyolites also occur in Tuscany, SE Spain, E Morocco, and NW Tunisia, and are associated in each region with mafic silica-undersaturated lavas, implying crustal underplating around the western Mediterranean before, during, and after formation of the Tyrrhenian basin.

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  1. Department of Geological Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, 78713-7909, Austin, TX, USA

    Daniel S. Barker

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Barker, D.S. Rhyolites contaminated with metapelite and gabbro, Lipari, Aeolian Islands, Italy: products of lower crustal fusion or of assimilation plus fractional crystallization?. Contr. Mineral. and Petrol. 97, 460–472 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00375324

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