Helium isotopic variations in Ethiopian plume lavas: nature of magmatic sources and limit on lower mantle contribution

Abstract

Oligocene Continental Flood Basalts (CFB) from Ethiopia exhibit a wide range of 3He/ 4He ratios, from 0.035 Ra in crust-contaminated Low-Ti lava to 19.6 Ra in plume-derived high-Ti lava (where Ra is the atmospheric ratio of 1.38 × 10 −6). Quaternary basalts sampled in the Main Ethiopian Rift and in Afar also display dramatic 3He/ 4He variations from 0.009 Ra to 16.9 Ra. Low isotopic ratios partly reflect crustal assimilation whereas 3He/ 4He values higher than the mean isotopic ratio of the upper mantle (8 ± 1 Ra as measured in Normal Mid-Ocean Ridge Basalts [N-MORB]) indicate the contribution of a lower mantle component. The geographical extension of plume-type He is consistent with an approximate radius of ∼ 1000 km for the flattened plume head. Helium isotopic data show that strong lower mantle signals were already apparent during early emissions of CFB and pre-dated by more than 15 Ma the major phases of rifting in the African Horn region, contrary to the view of passive decompression melting contemporary with large-scale rifting. The He-Sr composition of the plume component cannot result from a simple binary mixing between lower mantle and upper mantle end-members and requires the contribution of other component(s) such as recycled crust. The proportion of the lower mantle contribution to the total mass of material involved in the building of the Ethiopian magmatic province, as estimated from He contents and isotopic ratios in the respective mantle sources, is found to be small (< 5%). Except for He (and Ne), such contribution has no impact on the trace element and isotopic compositions of plume basalts, which are dominated by mixing between upper mantle, continental crust and recycled sources. If the thermal anomaly necessary to produce CFB originates in the lower mantle, as generally proposed, then there exists a dramatic decoupling between mass and heat transfers across the lower mantle-upper mantle boundary layer.