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Anomalous sulphur isotopes in plume lavas reveal deep mantle storage of Archaean crust

Nature volume 496, pages 490–493 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Basaltic lavas erupted at some oceanic intraplate hotspot volcanoes are thought to sample ancient subducted crustal materials1,2. However, the residence time of these subducted materials in the mantle is uncertain and model-dependent3, and compelling evidence for their return to the surface in regions of mantle upwelling beneath hotspots is lacking. Here we report anomalous sulphur isotope signatures indicating mass-independent fractionation (MIF) in olivine-hosted sulphides from 20-million-year-old ocean island basalts from Mangaia, Cook Islands (Polynesia), which have been suggested to sample recycled oceanic crust3,4. Terrestrial MIF sulphur isotope signatures (in which the amount of fractionation does not scale in proportion with the difference in the masses of the isotopes) were generated exclusively through atmospheric photochemical reactions until about 2.45 billion years ago5,6,7. Therefore, the discovery of MIF sulphur in these young plume lavas suggests that sulphur—probably derived from hydrothermally altered oceanic crust—was subducted into the mantle before 2.45 billion years ago and recycled into the mantle source of Mangaia lavas. These new data provide evidence for ancient materials, with negative Δ33S values, in the mantle source for Mangaia lavas. Our data also complement evidence for recycling of the sulphur content of ancient sedimentary materials to the subcontinental lithospheric mantle that has been identified in diamond-hosted sulphide inclusions8,9. This Archaean age for recycled oceanic crust also provides key constraints on the length of time that subducted crustal material can survive in the mantle, and on the timescales of mantle convection from subduction to upwelling beneath hotspots.

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Figure 1: Reflected-light photomicrographs of sulphide inclusions.
Figure 2: Δ33S versus δ34S for olivine-hosted sulphide inclusions from Mangaia (this study) and diamond-hosted sulphides (from ref. 8) compared to previously published S-isotope data.
Figure 3: The Pb-isotope composition of olivine-hosted sulphides are the same as Mangaia whole rocks.

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Acknowledgements

M.G.J. acknowledges Boston University start-up funds and NSF grant EAR-1145202 that supported this work. E.F.R.-K. and K.T.K. acknowledge support from EU SYNTHESYS and French ANR SlabFlux, this is Laboratory of Excellence ClerVolc contribution number 54. The NordSIMS facility is financed and operated under a joint Nordic contract; this is NordSIMS contribution number 337. We thank B. White for his review of the manuscript, and P. Cartigny and J. Labidi for discussion. We thank D.T. Johnston, D. Papineau, O. J. Rouxel and S. Ono for advice in compiling the global S-isotope database. We also thank N. Shimizu, B. D. Monteleone, E. A. Price, and P. Schiano for assistance with sample preparation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA,

    Rita A. Cabral & Matthew G. Jackson

  2. Laboratoire Magmas et Volcans, Université Blaise Pascal, CNRS UMR6524, IRD R163, 5 rue Kessler, 63038 Clermont-Ferrand, France,

    Estelle F. Rose-Koga & Kenneth T. Koga

  3. Swedish Museum of Natural History, Box 50007, SE-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden,

    Martin J. Whitehouse

  4. Department of Geological Sciences, Stockholm University, Stockholm, SE-106 91, Sweden

    Martin J. Whitehouse

  5. Department of Geology and ESSIC, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, 20742, USA

    Michael A. Antonelli & James Farquhar

  6. Geosciences Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, 92093-0244, California, USA

    James M. D. Day

  7. Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC 20015, USA

    Erik H. Hauri

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  1. Rita A. Cabral
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Contributions

R.A.C. wrote the paper and prepared the figures and tables. M.G.J. conceived the project. R.A.C., E.F.R.-K, K.T.K. and M.G.J. performed sample preparation. M.J.W. performed the in situ SIMS analyses. J.F. and M.A.A. performed the S-isotope analyses on bulk olivine separates. J.M.D.D. and E.H.H. aided in the field. All authors participated in the discussion and interpretation of results, and preparation of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Rita A. Cabral.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains a Supplementary Discussion, which describes the sulfide inclusions in greater detail and addresses the isotope measurements on inclusions, bulk olivines and standards; Supplementary Figures 1-5 details as follows: 1 Schematic representation of the model for preserving ⊓33S anomalies in the mantle, 2 ⊓33S measurements compared to previously published data showing ⊓33S through time, 3 shows transmitted light, reflected light, and backscattered electron (BSE) images of each inclusion, 4 shows the individual S-isotope measurements of samples, standards, and monitors for each analytical session, 5 Correlated error ellipses that enabled the accurate determination of small ⊓33S anomalies; Supplementary Tables 1-5 details as follows: 1 Compositions of the host olivines and a single glassy inclusion, 2 Major element data for the sulfide inclusions, 3 S-isotope data for in situ SIMS analyses of sulfide inclusions and standards, 4 Pb-isotope data for the sulfide inclusions, 5 S-isotope data by IRMS on SIMS sulfide standards and bulk olivine separates from the rock sample (MGA-B-47) that hosts the sulfide with the most extreme ⊓33S anomaly; and Supplementary References. (PDF 931 kb)

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Cabral, R., Jackson, M., Rose-Koga, E. et al. Anomalous sulphur isotopes in plume lavas reveal deep mantle storage of Archaean crust. Nature 496, 490–493 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12020

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