Mantle mixing and continental breakup magmatism

Abstract

The frequent formation of large igneous provinces during the opening of the Atlantic Ocean is a surface manifestation of the thermal and chemical state of convecting mantle beneath the supercontinent Pangea. Recent geochemical and geophysical findings from the North Atlantic igneous province all point to the significant role of incomplete mantle mixing in igneous petrogenesis. On the basis of a whole-mantle convection model with chemical tracers, I demonstrate that sublithospheric convection driven by surface cooling can bring up dense fertile mantle without a thermal anomaly. When small-scale convection in the upper mantle breaks down into the lower mantle, strong counter upwelling takes place, entraining a large amount of dense crustal fragments accumulated at the base of the mantle transition zone. This multi-scale mantle mixing could potentially explain a variety of hotspot phenomenology as well as the formation of both volcanic and non-volcanic rifted margins, with a spatially and temporally varying distribution of fertile mantle.