ALBERT

Notes: Abstract Lewisian grey gneisses from Gruinard Bay, North-west Scotland retain mineralogical and geochemical evidence for Scourian horn-blende-granulite facies metamorphism, and they may be used to assess current models of elemental depletion at granulite grade. Their ‘immobile’major and trace element geochemistry is indistinguishable from that of Lewisian amphibolite and pyroxene-granulite facies counterparts. The K, Rb, Th and U contents of the Gruinard Bay gneisses are depleted relative to amphibolite facies gneisses, but generally the abundances of these elements are above those of comparable pyroxene granulites. U and Th have reached an advanced stage of depletion, but allanite appears to be crucial in maintaining significantly higher U and Th abundances at Gruinard Bay than in pyroxene granulites. K and Rb loss is less extreme, and depends on the stability of the rock-forming minerals: K-feldspar; biotite; and, amphibole. Early removal of K and Rb has resulted in a small rise in K/Rb, but further preferential Rb loss would have been required to generate the characteristically high K/Rb ratios of Lewisian pyroxene granulites.The residence of U and Th in the accessory minerals of granulite facies gneisses, which are often correlated with the residua of intracrustal partial melting, renders unlikely their extreme incompatibility required by such models. Even if such phases are ignored, high mineral-melt partition coefficients for silicic melts argue against partial fusion as an efficient depletion mechanism. On the other hand, the advanced stage of U and Th depletion reached in Gruinard Bay gneisses, which were still partly hydrous, severely restricts the role played by CO2-dominated fluids and a hydrous medium is preferred.

Notes: [Auszug] SIR - Burton et al1 have presented U-Pb and Sm-Nd mineral regression ages on rocks from the Lewisian complex at Gruinard Bay, which apparently require that "the history of crustal development in the Lewisian complex will have to be radically rethought"2. They1 ...

Notes: Abstract Ach'Uaine Hybrid appinites represent a rare example of lamprophyric magmas that were demonstrably exactly contemporaneous with felsic differentiates, preserved within a suite of minor, hypabyssal intrusions emplaced at the end of the Caledonian orogeny in northern Scotland. Numerous small stocks, bosses and dykes show outcrop-scale relationships characteristic of mingling between lamprophyric and syenitic magmas, and are commonly cut by sharp-sided granite veins. The mafic rocks are characterised by Ni and Cr abundances and MgO sufficiently high to signal derivation from a mantle source within which radiogenic 87Sr/86Sr and nonradiogenic 143Nd/144Nd ratios require significant time-integrated incompatible element enrichment. This is manifest in high Ba, Sr and light REE abundances and incompatible element ratios in the derived magmas directly comparable with those of high Ba-Sr granitoids and related rocks. Quantitative major element, trace element, radiogenic and stable isotope modelling is consistent with early fractionation of clinopyroxene and biotite, accompanied by minor crustal assimilation, having driven the evolving lamprophyric magma to cogenetic syenite. Subsequent derivation of granite required a major change to feldspar-dominated crystal fractionation with continued, still minor contamination. The elemental and isotopic characteristics of the granitic terminus are so similar to high Ba-Sr granitoids both locally and worldwide, that these too may have had large mantle components and represent significant juvenile additions to the crust.

Notes: Abstract Syenites are important or predominant components of several plutonic complexes, emplaced between 456 and 415 Ma along the NW margin of the Caledonian orogenic belt, adjacent to the Lewisian foreland, in W and NW Scotland. Although there are, in detail, chemical differences between the syenites from each centre, they form a well-defined compositional group overall. Ratios amongst their trace elements (especially very high values of La/Nb) are quite different from those trachytes and syenites formed by fractional crystallisation of ocean-island basalts and their continental equivalents, emplaced in regions of anorogenic crustal tension. Instead, the Scottish Caledonian syenites closely resemble chemically the fractional-crystallisation residua of potassic subduction-related magmas, such as the shoshonitic series. A comendite minor intrusion from a swarm associated with the Loch Borralan and Loch Ailsh syenitic complexes is remarkably similar in composition to Recent obsidian from the shoshonitic volcano of Lipari, in the Aeolian Arc. Published Sr- and Pb-isotopic ratios preclude a significant component of either upper (Proterozoic Moine schists) or lower crust (granulite-facies Archaean Lewisian or Proterozoic Grenvillian gneisses) in all these syenites, except in local syenitic facies of the Glenelg-Ratagain complex. Fractional crystallisation appears to be the mechanism by which the liquids which formed these syenites evolved from basic parental magmas. The phases involved in this process may have included plagioclase, alkali feldspar, pyroxene, amphibole, biotite, garnet, Fe-Ti oxide, sphene, allanite, apatite, zircon and zirconolite, and therefore all the ratios amongst even the so-called incompatible elements may have changed during the evolution of the leucocratic magmas. Nevertheless, a detailed study of the Glen Dessarry complex shows that the changes are insufficient to disguise the geochemical nature of the parental magmas. These appear to be picritic shoshonite (MgO〉 15%, Ni〉400ppm, La/Yb∼20, La/Nb〉5) for the Glen Dessarry, Loch Borralan and Loch Ailsh syenites, and picritic ultrapotassic magmas (MgO〉15%, Ni〉400 ppm, La/ Yb∼60, La/Nb〉7) — such as would crystallise to minettes — for the Loch Loyal and Glenelg-Ratagain syenites. Mafic shoshonites were erupted amongst the 410 Ma Lome lavas of this region and also occur as widespread approximately-contemporaneous volcanic feeder plugs. Minettes of similar age are also common as dykes in NW Scotland. Numerous large tonalite-granite complexes, with minor diorites and gabbros, were emplaced in W and NW Scotland between 435 and 400 Ma. These are generally acknowledged to be mixtures of magmas from crustal and mantle sources. Their more mafic members show compositional features, such as very high Ba and Sr, which group them with the rare syenites and the Lorne lavas of the same region into a distinctive geochemical province, within which shoshonitic and allied magmas were the mantle-derived component. Two models are presented to account for the generation of strongly-potassic, subduction-related magmas several hundred km behind a NW-directed subduction zone, or during the period immediately following continental collision.