RETRACTED: Sapphirine and fluid inclusions in Tel Thanoun mantle xenoliths,Syria

Abstract

Volcanoes along the Syrian rift, which extend a distance of about 1000 km, brought to the surface mantle xenoliths within erupted basalts, during multiples periods of volcanic activity. Xenoliths in early Cretaceous volcanoes originate in the garnet peridotite field of the subcontinental mantle, whereas those in recent Cenozoic volcanoes, the prime object of this study, are issued from shallower levels (spinel peridotite field). The recent discovery of sapphirine-bearing websterite in Tel Thanoun, a small volcanic diatreme inside the larger Quaternary volcanic field (Djebel Al Arab), allows us to estimate the P-T evolution and fluid–rock interaction at the volcanic source. Harzburgites and lherzolites are equilibrated at a temperature of about 1000 °C at a depth of 35–40 km. Sapphirine appears to have formed during cooling, at depth at a temperature of about 900 °C, at a time where spinel exsolution occurred in harzburgite and lherzolite pyroxenes. This occurred in the presence of a high-density pure CO2 fluid phase, still present in primary fluid inclusions. The highly-aluminous sapphirine-bearing protolith might be former garnet websterite (possibly uplifted during cretaceous magmatism), which resided and cooled in the spinel peridotite stability field, and was then dragged and brought to the surface by quaternary basalts.