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Linking mantle plumes, large igneous provinces and environmental catastrophes

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Abstract

Large igneous provinces (LIPs) are known for their rapid production of enormous volumes of magma (up to several million cubic kilometres in less than a million years)1, for marked thinning of the lithosphere2,3, often ending with a continental break-up, and for their links to global environmental catastrophes4,5. Despite the importance of LIPs, controversy surrounds even the basic idea that they form through melting in the heads of thermal mantle plumes2,3,6,7,8,9,10. The Permo-Triassic Siberian Traps11—the type example and the largest continental LIP1,12—is located on thick cratonic lithosphere1,12 and was synchronous with the largest known mass-extinction event1. However, there is no evidence of pre-magmatic uplift or of a large lithospheric stretching7, as predicted above a plume head2,6,9. Moreover, estimates of magmatic CO2 degassing from the Siberian Traps are considered insufficient to trigger climatic crises13,14,15, leading to the hypothesis that the release of thermogenic gases from the sediment pile caused the mass extinction15,16. Here we present petrological evidence for a large amount (15 wt%) of dense recycled oceanic crust in the head of the plume and develop a thermomechanical model that predicts no pre-magmatic uplift and requires no lithospheric extension. The model implies extensive plume melting and heterogeneous erosion of the thick cratonic lithosphere over the course of a few hundred thousand years. The model suggests that massive degassing of CO2 and HCl, mostly from the recycled crust in the plume head, could alone trigger a mass extinction and predicts it happening before the main volcanic phase, in agreement with stratigraphic and geochronological data for the Siberian Traps and other LIPs5.

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Figure 1: Petrological constraints.
Figure 2: Model.
Figure 3: Model predictions.
Figure 4: Production of volatiles and its consequences for mass extinctions.

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Acknowledgements

S.V.S. and A.V.S. are especially grateful to Vladimir Stepanovich Sobolev, who excited their interest in the origin of the Siberian Traps. We thank G. A. Fedorenko for providing data on the Norilsk lavas and for discussions; N. Groschopf for help in managing the electron probe microanalyser; O. Kuzmina, N. Svirskaya and T. Shlichkova for sample preparation; P. Cardin, N. Dobretsov, E. Galimov, C. Herzberg, A. Hofmann, L. Kogarko, H.-C. Nataf, J. Payne, Y. Podladchikov, I. Ryabchikov, A. Turchyn and G. Wörner for discussions; and P. Kelemen for comments. S.V.S. thanks the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) SPP 1375 SAMPLE (SO 425/4) for support. The study by A.V.S. was funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, France (Chair of Excellence Grant ANR-09-CEXC-003-01) and partly supported by a Gauss Professorship in Göttingen University, Germany, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (09-05-01193a), a Russian President grant for leading Russian scientific schools (НШ-3919.2010.5) and an Earth Sciences Department of Russian Academy Grants.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

S.V.S. and A.V.S. provided major contributions to thermomechanical (S.V.S.) and petrological (A.V.S.) modelling, to the interpretation of data and to the writing of the paper. N.A.K. provided geological background and contributed to interpretation. A.G.P. contributed to the thermomechanical modelling at an initial stage. N.T.A. contributed to interpretation and writing of the paper. D.V.K. processed samples and performed the measurements. N.A.K., V.A.R. and Y.R.V. provided carefully selected samples. All authors contributed intellectually to the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Stephan V. Sobolev or Alexander V. Sobolev.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Text and Data, Supplementary Figures 1-6 with legends, additional references and Supplementary Tables 1-2. (PDF 3590 kb)

Supplementary Table 3

This table contains the compositions of olivine and host lavas. (XLS 2456 kb)

Supplementary Movie 1

This animated movie shows the evolution of the potential temperature (°C) in the model of the lithospheric destruction by the hot thermo-chemical plume. Model time in mln years is shown in the left corner. The solid curve marks the boundary of the depleted lithosphere. (AVI 3586 kb)

Supplementary Movie 2

This animated movie shows the evolution of the chemical composition of the mantle (content of the pyroxenitic/eclogitic component), in the model of the lithospheric destruction by the hot thermo-chemical plume. Model time in mln years is shown in the left corner. (AVI 4286 kb)

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Sobolev, S., Sobolev, A., Kuzmin, D. et al. Linking mantle plumes, large igneous provinces and environmental catastrophes. Nature 477, 312–316 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10385

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