Halogen-bearing minerals in syenites and high-grade marbles of Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica: monitors of fluid compositional changes during late-magmatic fluid-rock interaction processes

Abstract

Meta-sedimentary rocks including marbles and calcsilicates in Central Dronning Maud Land (CDML) in East Antarctica experienced a Pan-African granulite facies metamorphism with peak metamorphic conditions around 830 ± 20 °C at 6.8 ± 0.5 kbar which was accompanied by the post-kinematic intrusion of huge amounts of syenitic (charnockitic) magmas at 4.5 ± 0.7 kbar. The marbles and calcsilicates may represent meta-evaporites as indicated by the occurrence of metamorphic gypsum/anhydrite and Cl-rich scapolite that formed in the presence of saline fluids with X NaCl in the range 0.15–0.27. The marbles and calcsilicates bear biotite, tremolite and/or hornblende and humite group minerals (clinohumite, chondrodite and humite) which are inferred to have crystallized at about 650 °C and 4.5 kbar. The syenitic intrusives contain late-magmatic biotite and amphibole (formed between 750 and 800 °C) as well as relictic magmatic fayalite, orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene. Two syenite and two calcsilicate samples contain fluorite. Corona textures in the marbles and calcsilicates suggest very low fluid-rock ratios during the formation of the retrograde (650 °C) assemblages. Biotite in all but two syenite samples crystallized at log(f H 2 O/f HF) ratios of 2.9 ± 0.4, while in the calcsilicates, both biotite and humite group minerals indicate generally higher log(f H 2 O/f HF) values of up to 5.2. A few samples, though, overlap with the syenite values. Log(f H 2 O/f HCl) derived from biotite covers the range 0.5–2.6 in all rock types. Within a single sample, the calculated values for both parameters vary typically by 0.1 to 0.8 log units. Water and halogen acid fugacities calculated from biotite-olivine/orthopyroxene-feldspar-quartz equilibria and the above fugacity ratios are 1510–2790 bars for H2O, 1.3–5.3 bars for HF and 7–600 bars for HCl. The results are interpreted to reflect the reaction of relatively homogeneous magmatic fluids [in terms of log(f H 2 O /f HF)] derived from the late-magmatic stages of the syenites with both earlier crystallized, still hotter parts of the syenites and with adjacent country rocks during down-temperature fluid flow. Fluorine is successively removed from the fluid and incorporated into F-bearing minerals (close to the syenite into metamorphic fluorite). In the course of this process log(f H 2 O /f HF) increases significantly. Chlorine preferably partitions into the fluid and hence log(f H 2 O /f HCl) does not change markedly during fluid-rock interaction.