Are diamond-bearing Cretaceous kimberlites related to low-angle subduction beneath western North America?

Currie, Claire A.; Beaumont, Christopher

doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2010.12.036

Cited by 78 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…Under these conditions the Farallon crust probably would be too cool (English et al, 2003;Currie and Beaumont, 2011;Manea et al, 2012) to overcome the activation barrier required for eclogite transformation (of ∼600-800 • C, van Hunen et al, 2004). Uplift above sea level and creation of kmscale relief in the SW Colorado Plateau at 80-70 Ma (Flowers et al, 2008;Flowers and Farley, 2012) corresponds to the time when the Shatsky conjugate passed beneath this region (Fig.…”

Section: Fate Of the Shatsky Conjugate Crustmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Indeed, if the Shatsky conjugate passed by with basaltic crust, we would expect an uplift event similar in magnitude to that experienced by the SW Colorado Plateau. Thermal evolution models of flatsubducting ocean lithosphere predict that the crust would have attained temperatures of about 500-800 • C (depending on conditions) in this vicinity (English et al, 2003;Currie and Beaumont, 2011;Manea et al, 2012).…”

Section: Fate Of the Shatsky Conjugate Crustmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Recent craton growth by slab stacking beneath Wyoming

Humphreys

Schmandt

Bezada

et al. 2015

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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Available online xxxx Editor: P. Shearer Keywords: Wyoming craton Shatsky conjugate tomography Laramide Sevier Colorado Mineral BeltSeismic tomography images high-velocity mantle beneath the Wyoming craton extending to >250 km depth. Although xenoliths and isostatic arguments suggest that this mantle is depleted of basaltic component, it is not typical craton: its NE elongate shape extends SW of the Wyoming craton; xenoliths suggest that the base of Archean mantle was truncated from ∼180-200 to ∼140-150 km depth since the Devonian, and that the deeper mantle is younger than ∼200 Ma. The Sevier-Laramide orogeny is the only significant Phanerozoic tectonic event to have affected the region, and presumably caused the truncation. Apparently, the base of the Wyoming craton was removed and young, depleted mantle was emplaced beneath the Wyoming craton during the Sevier-Laramide orogeny. We suggest that the Wyoming craton experienced a ∼75 Ma phase of growth through a three-stage process. First, flat-slab subduction removed 40-50 km off the base of the Archean Wyoming craton. This was followed by emplacement of basaltdepleted ocean plateau mantle lithosphere of the Shatsky Rise conjugate, which arrived in the early Laramide. The geologic recorded of vertical motion in the Wyoming region suggests that the plateau's crust escaped into the Earth's interior at 70-75 Ma. Initiation of Colorado Mineral Belt magmatism at this time may represent a slab rupture through which the ocean crust escaped.

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Section: Fate Of the Shatsky Conjugate Crustmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Fate Of the Shatsky Conjugate Crustmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent craton growth by slab stacking beneath Wyoming

Humphreys

Schmandt

Bezada

et al. 2015

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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“…Currie and Beaumont, 2011;Schmandt and Humphreys, 2010). These authors discussed a dissected subducting Farallon slab, with portions basally accreted to the North American craton.…”

Section: Interpretation Discussion Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary observed with USArray receiver functions

et al. 2012

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Abstract. The dense deployment of seismic stations so far in the western half of the United States within the USArray project provides the opportunity to study in greater detail the structure of the lithosphere-asthenosphere system. We use the S receiver function technique for this purpose, which has higher resolution than surface wave tomography, is sensitive to seismic discontinuities, and is free from multiples, unlike P receiver functions. Only two major discontinuities are observed in the entire area down to about 300 km depth. These are the crust-mantle boundary (Moho) and a negative boundary, which we correlate with the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB), since a low velocity zone is the classical definition of the seismic observation of the asthenosphere by Gutenberg (1926). Our S receiver function LAB is at a depth of 70-80 km in large parts of westernmost North America. East of the Rocky Mountains, its depth is generally between 90 and 110 km. Regions with LAB depths down to about 140 km occur in a stretch from northern Texas, over the Colorado Plateau to the Columbia basalts. These observations agree well with tomography results in the westernmost USA and on the east coast. However, in the central cratonic part of the USA, the tomography LAB is near 200 km depth. At this depth no discontinuity is seen in the S receiver functions. The negative signal near 100 km depth in the central part of the USA is interpreted by Yuan and Romanowicz (2010) and Lekic and Romanowicz (2011) as a recently discovered midlithospheric discontinuity (MLD). A solution for the discrepancy between receiver function imaging and surface wave tomography is not yet obvious and requires more high resolution studies at other cratons before a general solution may be found. Our results agree well with petrophysical models of increased water content in the asthenosphere, which predict a sharp and shallow LAB also in continents (Mierdel et al., 2007).

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“…Active subduction zones were a key feature of the complex tectonic setting of western North America and the high Arctic during the Mesozoic era 24 , providing several options for the fluid source in the ideal time window to allow saline HDF generation, diamond formation and eruption of the diamonds in Eocene epoch kimberlites. The low-angle subduction that has been suggested for some of these plates, such as the Farallon slab 25 , provides an opportunity for the direct transfer of slab-derived fluids into the base of the cratonic lithosphere. The most pristine saline HDFs that interacted least with the lithospheric root have Sr isotopic signatures corresponding with early Jurassic period seawater 87 Sr/ 86 Sr values 26 , strengthening the temporal connection between subduction and metasomatism (Fig.…”

Section: Letter Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Highly saline fluids from a subducting slab as the source for fluid-rich diamonds

Weiss

McNeill

Pearson

et al. 2015

Nature

150

120

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The infiltration of fluids into continental lithospheric mantle is a key mechanism for controlling abrupt changes in the chemical and physical properties of the lithospheric root, as well as diamond formation, yet the origin and composition of the fluids involved are still poorly constrained. Such fluids are trapped within diamonds when they form and so diamonds provide a unique means of directly characterizing the fluids that percolate through the deep continental lithospheric mantle. Here we show a clear chemical evolutionary trend, identifying saline fluids as parental to silicic and carbonatitic deep mantle melts, in diamonds from the Northwest Territories, Canada. Fluid-rock interaction along with in situ melting cause compositional transitions, as the saline fluids traverse mixed peridotite-eclogite lithosphere. Moreover, the chemistry of the parental saline fluids--especially their strontium isotopic compositions--and the timing of host diamond formation suggest that a subducting Mesozoic plate under western North America is the source of the fluids. Our results imply a strong association between subduction, mantle metasomatism and fluid-rich diamond formation, emphasizing the importance of subduction-derived fluids in affecting the composition of the deep lithospheric mantle.

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Are diamond-bearing Cretaceous kimberlites related to low-angle subduction beneath western North America?

Cited by 78 publications

References 80 publications

Recent craton growth by slab stacking beneath Wyoming

Recent craton growth by slab stacking beneath Wyoming

The lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary observed with USArray receiver functions

Highly saline fluids from a subducting slab as the source for fluid-rich diamonds

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