Plastic deformation of olivine‐rich diogenites and implications for mantle processes on the diogenite parent body

Abstract

AbstractNumerous petrologic and geochemical studies so far on the howardite, eucrite, and diogenite (HED) meteorites have produced various crystallization scenarios for their parent body, believed to be the differentiated asteroid 4 Vesta. Structural analyses of diogenites can reveal important insights into postcrystallization deformation on the parent body. Recently published results (Tkalcec et al. ) of structural analysis on the olivine‐rich diogenite NWA 5480 reveal that it underwent solid‐state plastic deformation, although not at the base of a magma chamber. Dynamic mantle downwelling has been proposed as a plausible deformation mechanism (Tkalcec et al. ). The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the plastic deformation found in NWA 5480 is an isolated case. We expand the structural analysis on NWA 5480 and extend it to NWA 5784 and MIL 07001,6, two other samples of rare olivine‐rich diogenites, using electron‐backscattered‐diffraction (EBSD) techniques. Our EBSD results show that the diogenites analyzed in this study underwent solid‐state plastic deformation, confirming that the observed deformation of NWA 5480 was not an isolated case on the diogenite parent body. The lattice‐preferred orientations (LPOs) of olivine in NWA 5784 and NWA 5480 are clearly distinct from that typical for cumulate rocks at the base of magma chambers, indicating a different stress environment and a different deformation mechanism. The LPO of olivine in MIL 07001 is less conclusive. The structural results of this study suggest that plastic deformation occurred on the diogenite parent body at high temperatures (1273 < T ≤ 1573 K) in the solid state, i.e., after crystallization of the diogenites themselves, in a dynamic environment with active stress fields.