Abstract
Recent experimental work on peridotites and basalts1–3 and a reappraisal of ophiolite complexes4 supports the concept that basalts are derived from picritic parents5–7. The occurrence of a density minimum in the liquid line of descent8–10 explains why mid-ocean ridge tholeiites fall in a restricted compositional range, and parental picrites can only be found in the exceptional case when eruption is not yet controlled by a steady-state magma chamber7,11. We present here a preliminary account of a natural example of such a case from the Caribbean.
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Beets, D., Klaver, G., Beunk, F. et al. Picrites as parental magma of MORB-type tholeiites. Nature 296, 341–343 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1038/296341a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/296341a0
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