Fractional crystallization and magma mixing in the Tigalak layered intrusion, the Nain anorthosite complex, Labrador

Abstract

The Tigalak intrusion is a dominantly dioritic layered body, about 80 km² in area, which ranges in composition from norite to granodiorite. Local areas of the layered rocks display upward fractionation from norite to ferrodiorite. Periodic reversals of mineral composition trends record the emplacement of less fractionated dioritic magma. Heterogeneous mixtures of dioritic and granodioritic rocks occur widely in mappable lenses and layers that alternate up section and along the strike with more uniformly layered rocks. In these mixtures, chilled dioritic pillows occur abundantly in a hybrid cumulate matrix of granodiorite to diorite composition. Cross-cutting granodioritic dikes grade upward into stratigraphically-bound lensoid masses of the hybrid cumulates. It appears that the hybrid rocks formed as a result of the emplacement of the granodioritic magma through lower cumulates into the dioritic magma chamber and that the dioritic pillows represent chilled bodies of Ferich dioritic magma that commingled with cooler granodioritic magma and settled to the floor of the Tigalak magma chamber.

The restricted distribution of these mixtures of hybrid cumulates and chilled pillows indicates that mixing between granodioritic and dioritic liquids was limited in time and lateral extent. Periodic injections of granodioritic liquids may have collected as a separate layer below the roof of the magma chamber and above dioritic magma.