Formation of tonalite from basaltic magma at the Komahashi-Daini Seamount, northern Kyushu-Palau Ridge in the Philippine Sea, and growth of Izu-Ogasawara (Bonin)-Mariana arc crust

Abstract

Tonalitic rocks dredged from the Komahashi-Daini Seamount, northern Kyushu-Palau Ridge are classified as biotite–hornblende tonalites and hornblende tonalites. These rocks have radiometric ages of 37–38 Ma, indicating that felsic plutonic activity occurred during the early stages of Izu-Ogasawara (Bonin)-Mariana (IBM) arc volcanism. Therefore, this tonalite complex has great importance for understanding the initial processes of island arc and continental crust formation. These tonalitic rocks exhibit the following petrological and geochemical characteristics: (1) common lamellar twins and oscillatory zoning patterns in plagioclase phenocrysts throughout the compositional range; (2) hornblende tonalite shows parallel REE patterns and increasing total REE content with increasing SiO2, except for an increasingly strong negative Eu anomaly at higher SiO2 levels; and (3) isotopic composition remains constant over a wide silica variation. We compare this tonalite with younger tonalities of the same arc from the Tanzawa Complex (10–5 Ma), central Japan, considered to represent the lower–middle crust of the IBM arc, and find the following differences: (1) cumulate textures found in Tanzawa tonalites are not observed in samples from the Komahashi-Daini Seamount; and (2) Komahashi-Daini Seamount tonalites, unlike those from Tanzawa, exhibit linear variations of Zr and REEs vs. SiO2 plots. These data and other observations support the interpretation that tonalite in the Komahashi-Daini Seamount was produced by crystal fractionation from basaltic magma. We suggest that fractional crystallization operated during the early stage of oceanic island arc formation to produce tonalite, whereas tonalities in later stages formed largely by partial melting of basaltic lower crust, as represented by the tonalites in the Tanzawa Complex.