Rift-induced disruption of cratonic keels drives kimberlite volcanism
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(Published version)
Date
2023
Authors
Gernon, T.M.
Jones, S.M.
Brune, S.
Hincks, T.K.
Palmer, M.R.
Schumacher, J.C.
Primiceri, R.M.
Field, M.
Griffin, W.L.
O’Reilly, S.Y.
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Journal article
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Nature, 2023; 620(7973):344-350
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Thomas M. Gernon, Stephen M. Jones, Sascha Brune, Thea K. Hincks, Martin R. Palmer, John C. Schumacher, Rebecca M. Primiceri, Matthew Field, William L. Griffin, Suzanne Y. O, Reilly, Derek Keir, Christopher J. Spencer, Andrew S. Merdith, Anne Glerum
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Abstract
Kimberlites are volatile-rich, occasionally diamond-bearing magmas that have erupted explosively at Earth’s surface in the geologic past1–3. These enigmatic magmas, originating from depths exceeding 150 km in Earth’s mantle1, occur in stable cratons and in pulses broadly synchronous with supercontinent cyclicity4. Whether their mobilization is driven by mantle plumes5 or by mechanical weakening of cratonic lithosphere4,6 remains unclear. Here we show that most kimberlites spanning the past billion years erupted about 30 million years (Myr) after continental breakup, suggesting an association with rifting processes. Our dynamical and analytical models show that physically steep lithosphere–asthenosphere boundaries (LABs) formed during rifting generate convective instabilities in the asthenosphere that slowly migrate many hundreds to thousands of kilometres inboard of rift zones. These instabilities endure many tens of millions of years after continental breakup and destabilize the basal tens of kilometres of the cratonic lithosphere, or keel. Displaced keel is replaced by a hot, upwelling mixture of asthenosphere and recycled volatile-rich keel in the return flow, causing decompressional partial melting. Our calculations show that this process can generate small-volume, low-degree, volatile-rich melts, closely matching the characteristics expected of kimberlites1–3. Together, these results provide a quantitative and mechanistic link between kimberlite episodicity and supercontinent cycles through progressive disruption of cratonic keels.
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Published online: 26 July 2023.
Corrected by: Author Correction: Rift-induced disruption of cratonic keels drives kimberlite volcanism, in Nature volume 625, page E7 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06960-2. This article was originally published under a standard Springer Nature licence (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited). It is now available as an open-access paper under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence, © The Author(s). The status has been updated in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.
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© The Author(s) 2023, corrected publication 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.