TY - JOUR
T1 - Chemical composition of crustal xenoliths from southwestern Syria
T2 - Characterization of the upper part of the lower crust beneath the Arabian plate
AU - Al-Safarjalani, Abdulrahman
AU - Nasir, Sobhi
AU - Fockenberg, Thomas
AU - Massonne, Hans Joachim
N1 - Funding Information:
A. A l -Safarjalani thanks the DAAD (German academic exchange service) for providing financial support, which allowed him to stay for 2 months at the Institut für Mineralogie und Kristallchemie at Universität Stuttgart. This paper benefited from the constructive review by Martin Okrusch.
PY - 2009/11
Y1 - 2009/11
N2 - The chemical bulk rock composition of 37 xenoliths, brought from depths of 25-30 km to the surface by penetrating Cenozoic alkali basaltic magma, from the Shamah Harrat, southwestern Syria, was determined by XRF spectroscopy. The geochemical character of these xenoliths points to original marls and within-plate igneous rocks. To obtain the mean chemical composition of the corresponding upper portion of the lower crust, the compositions of the 37 xenoliths were averaged and a leucogranitic and upper crustal component was added to account for assimilation by the Cenozoic magmas. This mean is more basic (SiO2-50.5 wt%) and richer in HFSE, LREE, and LILE compared to compositions of the lower crust given by Taylor and McLennan [1985. The Continental Crust: Its Composition and Evolution. Blackwell, Oxford, 312pp.] and Rudnick and Gao [2005. Composition of the continental crust. In: Rudnick, R.L. (Ed.), The Crust. Treatise on Geochemistry, vol. 3. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 1-64]. Calculations of the seismic compressional-wave velocity from our compositional mean, using the PERPLE_X computer software, yielded values around 6.85 km/s, which are in accordance with reported seismic studies for the corresponding depth levels (6.7-7.1 km/s).
AB - The chemical bulk rock composition of 37 xenoliths, brought from depths of 25-30 km to the surface by penetrating Cenozoic alkali basaltic magma, from the Shamah Harrat, southwestern Syria, was determined by XRF spectroscopy. The geochemical character of these xenoliths points to original marls and within-plate igneous rocks. To obtain the mean chemical composition of the corresponding upper portion of the lower crust, the compositions of the 37 xenoliths were averaged and a leucogranitic and upper crustal component was added to account for assimilation by the Cenozoic magmas. This mean is more basic (SiO2-50.5 wt%) and richer in HFSE, LREE, and LILE compared to compositions of the lower crust given by Taylor and McLennan [1985. The Continental Crust: Its Composition and Evolution. Blackwell, Oxford, 312pp.] and Rudnick and Gao [2005. Composition of the continental crust. In: Rudnick, R.L. (Ed.), The Crust. Treatise on Geochemistry, vol. 3. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 1-64]. Calculations of the seismic compressional-wave velocity from our compositional mean, using the PERPLE_X computer software, yielded values around 6.85 km/s, which are in accordance with reported seismic studies for the corresponding depth levels (6.7-7.1 km/s).
KW - Compressional-wave velocity
KW - Lower crustal composition
KW - SW Syria
KW - Within-plate igneous rocks
KW - Xenoliths
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U2 - 10.1016/j.chemer.2009.05.005
DO - 10.1016/j.chemer.2009.05.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:71749091177
SN - 0009-2819
VL - 69
SP - 359
EP - 375
JO - Chemie der Erde
JF - Chemie der Erde
IS - 4
ER -