The Upper Visean Magdalen Islands Basalts of Eastern Quebec, Canada: A Complex Assemblage of Contrasting Mafic Rock Types Erupted in Peak Stages of Transtensional Basin Development above a Mantle Plume

Abstract

A thick succession of mafic upper Asbian volcanic rocks is exposed as cap rocks in the Magdalen Islands of eastern Quebec. This succession records peak stages of a Late Devonian to Early Carboniferous magmatic system that regionally developed from transtensional tectonics above a mantle plume. In the upper part of the succession, tholeiitic basalts with enriched mid-oceanic ridge basalt (E-MORB) affinities are tightly interbedded with highly alkaline basalts with ocean island affinities, whereas the lower part is composed of moderately alkaline basalts and pyroclastic deposits that are interpreted as the products of mixing between these two compositionally distinct melts. Based on trace-element contents and geological constraints, the tholeiitic basalts were produced by decompressional melting in depleted uppermost asthenospheric mantle material enriched over the average (E-MORB-type source) at the top of the plume, whereas the highly alkaline basalts were produced subsequently when decompressional melting reached down into the enriched mantle (ocean island basalt–type source). These two primary melts may have been thermally stratified below the lithosphere before being tapped by transtensional structures to feed a thick magmatic underplating that regionally developed at the base of the crust, where magma mixing may have occurred. Interbedding of the two contrasting melts in the upper part of the succession implies that, although the two primary mantle sources were still being tapped into, magma mixing was by then no longer occurring. Above a small gap, the uppermost flow is a fluorine-rich tholeiitic basalt with arc affinities that suggest partial melting of the regional subcontinental lithospheric mantle source, which was previously enriched by nearly continuous subduction below eastern Canada in early to middle Paleozoic times. The latter setting seemingly corresponds to the local waning of the magmatic system in uppermost Asbian times, possibly because of the westward migration of the overridden plume toward New Brunswick, where alkaline volcanism from a sublithospheric source resumed in Brigantian times.