Magma mingling in late-Delamerian A-type granites at mannum, South Australia

Abstract

The Mannum granite forms part of the Padthaway A-type granite suite, which intruded the Adelaide fold belt along with the Black Hill gabbroic complex just after the cessation of the Delamerian Orogeny. Included within the granite are microgranite blocks, inferred to be stoped pieces of a contaminated margin facies, and numerous mafic enclaves. These enclaves display a variety of globular and tear-drop shapes, are fine-grained, lack chilled margins and enclose and react with quartz and feldspar phenocrysts from the granite, suggesting they represent contemporaneous mafic magma that was mingling with the granite magma during intrusion. Modelled temperature-viscosity relationships show that, in order for these enclaves to behave in a plastic manner, the granite magma must have had a temperature in excess of 930 °C after thermal equilibration was achieved. The contemporaneity of mafic magmas resolves any thermal budget problems arising out of the formation of these high-temperature granites, and a considerable mantle flux is implied during their genesis, consistent with gravity data and the presence of the Black Hill gabbros. The enclave compositions range from dolerite and quartź-diorite to leucocratic varieties, and, together with the Mannum granite, the other Padthaway granites and rocks from the Black Hill gabbroic complex, define a tholeiite-granophyre series (SiO2 49-74%). Although the composition of the enclaves has been modified by diffusion and hybridism, the coherency of this array augments thermal arguments for a genetic relationship between the mafic and felsic magmas. Nd and Sr isotope data on the host granite and enclaves (87Sr/86Sri 0.7041-0.7060; εNdi + 4 to - 2) do not favour a crustal origin for any of the rocks. Rather, incompatible element plots indicate the A-type granites crystallized from highly fractionated magmas, consistent with rapid decreases in Eu/Eu* at relatively constant εNdi. The high Eu/Eu*, high εNdi end of this trend projects into the array for the associated mafic rocks. This suggests the A-type granites of the Padthaway suite may have resulted from segregation of evolved residual interstitial liquids which form chemically and isotopically similar granophyre in the Black Hill gabbroic plutons.