Clinopyroxene zoning patterns in the young alkali basalts of Hungary and their petrogenetic significance

Abstract

In the Upper Pliocene, during the final phase of igneous activity within the Pannonian Basin, alkali basalts were erupted. Their occurrences are restricted to two main regions in Hungary: 1) Transdanubia; 2) Nograd County. The clinopyroxene phenocrysts of these rocks are zoned titanaugites which often have distinctive colourless or green cores. Two kinds of green cores can be distinguished: 1. olive-green cores (fassaitic augite and fassaite), and 2. grassgreen cores (salite and ferrosalite). Both types of green cores are comparatively iron-rich and they occur only in the basalts of Nograd County. The olive-green fassaites probably precipitated from relatively evolved melts which have been mixed into their present host magmas, whereas the grassgreen salites and ferrosalites are xenocrysts derived probably from upper mantle rocks. The clinopyroxene zoning patterns suggest, that after being generated by small-degree partial melting in the mantle the Transdanubian basalts ascended to the surface with little or no modification en route, whereas those of Nograd County had a more complex evolution, in which fractionation at depth and magma mixing played an important role.