Picrite

Simple arguments show that ascending thermal plumes will entrain their surroundings as the result of coupling between conduction of heat and laminar stirring driven by the plume motion. In the initial stages of ascent of a plume fed by a continuous buoyancy flux (a starting plume) the plume consists of a large buoyant head followed by a narrow vertical conduit.

The eastern coast of King Island in southeastern Australia exposes a thick, well-preserved sequence of latest Neoproterozoic volcanic, and related shallow intrusive rocks. These rocks are associated with shallow marine carbonates and siltstones and pass up into massive conglomerates representing a marine flooding event and unconformity, during continental break-up and subsequent volcanic passive margin formation. Unusual differentiated sills (Grimes Intrusive suite) with extreme internal variation (wehrlite to andesite compositions) intrude deformed Proterozoic metasediments of the Rodinian basement. A thin, basal tholeiitic basaltic volcanic unit (City of Melbourne Volcanics) is less contaminated than the underlying sills, and preceded eruption of a thick sequence of highly depleted picritic pillows, sub-aerial flows and hyaloclastites (Shower Droplet Volcanics). The picrite sequence is overlain by thick tholeiitic basalts and reworked volcanogenic conglomerates (Bold Head Formation) that show a strong compositional similarity to enriched mid ocean ridge basalts. Both the picrites and the upper tholeiitic basalts are not crustally contaminated and have an Nd–Sm isochron age of 579 ± 16 Ma with initial ɛNd of +4.2. The lithostratigraphy and range of compositions represented are analogous to early magmatism associated with continental break-up and volcanic passive margin formation, including voluminous Seaward Dipping Reflector Sequences, in the Mesozoic North Atlantic volcanic margins.

The Archaean oceanic crust was probably thicker than present-day oceanic crust owing to higher heat flow and thus higher degrees of melting at mid-ocean ridges. These conditions would also have led to a different bulk composition of oceanic crust in the early Archaean, that would probably have consisted of magnesium-rich picrite (with variably differentiated portions made up of basalt, gabbro, ultramafic cumulates and picrite). It is unclear whether these differences would have influenced crustal subduction and recycling processes, as experiments that have investigated the metamorphic reactions that take place during subduction have to date considered only modern mid-ocean-ridge basalts. Here we present data from high-pressure experiments that show that metamorphism of ultramafic cumulates and picrites produces pyroxenites, which we infer would have delaminated and melted to produce basaltic rocks, rather than continental crust as has previously been thought. Instead, the formation of continental crust requires subduction and melting of garnet-amphibolite--formed only in the upper regions of oceanic crust--which is thought to have first occurred on a large scale during subduction in the late Archaean. We deduce from this that shallow subduction and recycling of oceanic crust took place in the early Archaean, and that this would have resulted in strong depletion of only a thin layer of the uppermost mantle. The misfit between geochemical depletion models and geophysical models for mantle convection (which include deep subduction) might therefore be explained by continuous deepening of this depleted layer through geological time.