Isotopic Evidence for Multiple Recycled Sulfur Reservoirs in the Mangaia Mantle Plume

Abstract

AbstractMangaia, an ocean island in the Cook‐Austral volcanic chain, is the type locality for the HIMU mantle reservoir and has also been shown to exhibit evidence for recycled sulfur with anomalous δ34S and Δ33S that has been attributed an Archean origin. Here we report bulk S‐isotope data from sulfide inclusions in olivine and pyroxene phenocrysts from one of the previously analyzed and four additional Mangaia basalts to further test for the prevalence of anomalous S in the HIMU mantle source feeding Mangaia. We document compositions that range from −5.13‰ to +0.21‰ (±0.3 2σ), +0.006‰ to +0.049‰ (±0.016 2σ), −0.81‰ to +0.69‰ (±0.3 2σ) for δ34S, Δ33S, and Δ36S, respectively. These data extend the range of measured compositions and suggest S‐isotope heterogeneity in the HIMU mantle source at Mangaia. We show that S‐isotope compositions of bulk sulfide in olivine is not in isotopic equilibrium with bulk sulfide in pyroxene from the same samples and that samples from a confined area (M4, M10, M12, and M13) in the northern central part of the island show a distinct covariation for δ34S and Δ33S. This isotopic variation (forming an array) suggests mixing of sulfur from two sources that were captured at different stages of crystallization by phenocrysts in the Mangaia HIMU sulfur endmember.