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Non-chondritic distribution of the highly siderophile elements in mantle sulphides

Nature volume 407, pages 891–894 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

The abundances of highly siderophile (iron-loving) elements (HSEs) in the Earth's mantle provide important constraints on models of the Earth's early evolution. It has long been assumed that the relative abundances of HSEs should reflect the composition of chondritic meteorites—which are thought to represent the primordial material from which the Earth was formed. But the non-chondritic abundance ratios recently found in several types of rock derived from the Earth's mantle1,2,3 have been difficult to reconcile with standard models of the Earth's accretion4,5,6,7,8,9, and have been interpreted as having arisen from the addition to the primitive mantle of either non-chondritic extraterrestrial material or differentiated material from the Earth's core. Here we report in situ laser-ablation analyses of sulphides in mantle-derived rocks which show that these sulphides do not have chondritic HSE patterns, but that different generations of sulphide within single samples show extreme variability in the relative abundances of HSEs. Sulphides enclosed in silicate phases have high osmium and iridium abundances but low Pd/Ir ratios, whereas pentlandite-dominated interstitial sulphides show low osmium and iridium abundances and high Pd/Ir ratios. We interpret the silicate-enclosed sulphides as the residues of melting processes and interstitial sulphides as the crystallization products of sulphide-bearing (metasomatic) fluids. We suggest that non-chondritic HSE patterns directly reflect processes occurring in the upper mantle—that is, melting and sulphide addition via metasomatism—and are not evidence for the addition of core material or of ‘exotic’ meteoritic components.

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Figure 1: Bulk sulphide compositions plotted in the Fe–Ni–S–Cu system.
Figure 2: Primitive-mantle29-normalized HSE abundances of sulphide.

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Acknowledgements

We thank F.R. (Joe) Boyd, S. Talnikova, Y. Barashkov and W.J. Powell for providing samples, and N.J. Pearson, C. Lawson and A. Sharma for assistance with the analytical facilities. We thank Y. Lahaye for comments on an earlier version of this Letter, and R. Carlson and M. Rehkämper for comments on the final version. This is a GEMOC National Key Centre publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GEMOC, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, 2109, New South Wales , Australia

    Olivier Alard, William L. Griffin, Simon E. Jackson & Suzanne Y. O'Reilly

  2. CSIRO Exploration and Mining, PO Box 136, North Ryde, 1670, New South Wales, Australia

    William L. Griffin

  3. Laboratoire de Mineralogie, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris, Unité ESA CNRS no. 7058 , 61 Rue Buffon, Paris, 75005, France

    Jean Pierre Lorand

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  1. Olivier Alard
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Correspondence to Olivier Alard.

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Alard, O., Griffin, W., Lorand, J. et al. Non-chondritic distribution of the highly siderophile elements in mantle sulphides. Nature 407, 891–894 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35038049

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