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Diamonds sampled by plumes from the core–mantle boundary

Nature volume 466, pages 352–355 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Diamonds are formed under high pressure more than 150 kilometres deep in the Earth’s mantle and are brought to the surface mainly by volcanic rocks called kimberlites. Several thousand kimberlites have been mapped on various scales1,2,3,4, but it is the distribution of kimberlites in the very old cratons (stable areas of the continental lithosphere that are more than 2.5 billion years old and 300 kilometres thick or more5) that have generated the most interest, because kimberlites from those areas are the major carriers of economically viable diamond resources. Kimberlites, which are themselves derived from depths of more than 150 kilometres, provide invaluable information on the composition of the deep subcontinental mantle lithosphere, and on melting and metasomatic processes at or near the interface with the underlying flowing mantle. Here we use plate reconstructions and tomographic images to show that the edges of the largest heterogeneities in the deepest mantle, stable for at least 200 million years and possibly for 540 million years, seem to have controlled the eruption of most Phanerozoic kimberlites. We infer that future exploration for kimberlites and their included diamonds should therefore be concentrated in continents with old cratons that once overlay these plume-generation zones at the core–mantle boundary.

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Figure 1: Reconstructed large igneous provinces and kimberlites for the past 320 Myr with respect to shear-wave anomalies at the base of the mantle.
Figure 2: Late-Jurassic plate reconstruction of continents and kimberlite locations draped on the SMEAN model.
Figure 3: Devonian and Cambrian period plate reconstructions draped on the SMEAN model.
Figure 4: Reconstructed Palaeozoic kimberlites from Laurentia (North America, Canada), Siberia and core Gondwana draped on the SMEAN model.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Trønnes, S. Haggerty, M. Gurnis and C. Gaina for comments and discussions, and S. King and D. Evans for reviews. We acknowledge Statoil and the Norwegian Research Council for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics of Geological Processes and Geosciences, University of Oslo, Blindern, 0316 Oslo, Norway,

    Trond H. Torsvik & Bernhard Steinberger

  2. Centre for Geodynamics, Geological Survey of Norway, Leiv Eirikssons vei 39, 7491 Trondheim, Norway,

    Trond H. Torsvik & Bernhard Steinberger

  3. School of Geosciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Wits, 2050, South Africa

    Trond H. Torsvik, Kevin Burke, Susan J. Webb & Lewis D. Ashwal

  4. Department of Geosciences, University of Houston, 312 Science and Research 1, Houston, Texas 77204-5007, USA,

    Kevin Burke

  5. Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, 14473, Germany

    Bernhard Steinberger

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Contributions

T.H.T. and K.B. developed the conceptual idea for the study, B.S. developed statistical methods and tests and S.J.W. and L.D.A. assembled input data. All authors contributed to discussions and writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Trond H. Torsvik.

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Torsvik, T., Burke, K., Steinberger, B. et al. Diamonds sampled by plumes from the core–mantle boundary. Nature 466, 352–355 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09216

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