Chemical heterogeneity in an enderbite-hosted pseudotachylite, eastern India: evidence for syn-deformation multi-reaction melting in pseudotachylite

Abstract

The origin of chemical and mineralogical heterogeneity in tens-of-microns wide layers and domains in enderbite-hosted couple-of-centimeters wide pseudotachylite vein is examined based on the results of BSE and X-ray element imaging, and electron probe microanalyses of major elements of host-rock minerals, clasts, microphenocrysts, and pseudotachylite matrix. The pseudotachylite layers and domains containing variable proportions of orthopyroxene and magnetite microphenocrysts continue as mantles around quartz, K-feldspar, plagioclase and garnet clasts. The clasts are chemically modified along margins and intra-clast pseudotachylite injections. The chemical modifications are extensive in smaller clasts <5 μm diameter. At least three chemically distinct layers and domains in the pseudotachylite, and their fine-grained matrices, plot in sharply defined, well-segregated and non-overlapping fields in FeO + MgO−Al2O3–SiO2, FeO–CaO–MgO and CaO–Na2O–K2O and FeO vs. FeO/FeO + MgO diagrams. The compositions of the layers and domains—smeared between a feldspar + quartz component and a ferromagnesian component of garnet + Fe–Ti oxides (±orthopyroxene)—possibly correspond to fractionated quenched melts, or admixtures of microphenocrysts that cannot be resolved by the microbeam techniques employed. The compositional variations are incompatible with deformation-driven crystal fractionation in melt. Instead the layers and domains possibly are crystal-melt mushes produced by syn-deformation ultra-high temperature (1,250–1,375°C) melting reactions involving variable proportions of host-rock minerals determined by time-transient local phase aggregates experiencing strain. The similar element variation trends in pseudotachylite examined here and those reported from anorthosite, metapelite and charnockite elsewhere suggests local phase aggregate controlled multi-reaction melting is a phenomenon commoner than hitherto realized in pseudotachylites.