The formation of tonalitic and granodioritic melt from Venusian basalt.

The crust of Venus is composed of the low lying volcanic planitiae and the elevated, deformed tesserae. It is thought that the tesserae may be composed of silicic igneous rocks and that it may resemble proto-continental crust. The initial development of terrestrial continental crust is likely due to melting and deformation of primitive mafic crust via mantle-plume upwelling and collisional plate processes.

Linking the Wrangellia flood basalts to the Galápagos hotspot.

The Triassic volcanic rocks of Wrangellia erupted at an equatorial to tropical latitude that was within 3000 km of western North America. The mafic and ultramafic volcanic rocks are compositionally and isotopically similar to those of oceanic plateaux that were generated from a Pacific mantle plume-type source. The thermal conditions, estimated from the primitive rocks, indicate that it was a high temperature regime (T > 1550 °C) consistent with elevated temperatures expected for a mantle plume.

Long-lived association between Avalonia and the Meguma terrane deduced from zircon geochronology of metasedimentary granulites.

The Acadian Orogeny of the Northern Appalachians was caused by accretion of the peri-Gondwanan terranes Avalonia and Meguma to the eastern margin of Laurentia during the Devonian. The lithotectonic relationship between Avalonia and Meguma prior to accretion is uncertain. Radioisotopic dating of detrital zircons from metasedimentary granulite xenoliths from the structural basement to the Meguma terrane indicates that Avalonia and Meguma were proximal and likely contiguous as they transited the Rheic Ocean.

Haida Gwaii (British Columbia, Canada): a Phanerozoic analogue of a subduction-unrelated Archean greenstone belt.

Understanding the formation and evolution of Precambrian greenstone belts is hampered by gaps in the rock record and the uncertainty of the tectonic regime that was operating at the time. Thus identifying a modern analogue of a Precambrian greenstone belt can be problematic. In this paper we present geological, geochemical and petrological evidence outlining the case for Haida Gwaii (British Columbia, Canada) as a modern example of a greenstone belt.

Derivation of intermediate to silicic magma from the basalt analyzed at the Vega 2 landing site, Venus.

Geochemical modeling using the basalt composition analyzed at the Vega 2 landing site indicates that intermediate to silicic liquids can be generated by fractional crystallization and equilibrium partial melting. Fractional crystallization modeling using variable pressures (0.01 GPa to 0.

Temporal and structural evolution of the Early Palæogene rocks of the Seychelles microcontinent.

The Early Palæogene Silhouette/North Island volcano-plutonic complex was emplaced during the rifting of the Seychelles microcontinent from western India. The complex is thought to have been emplaced during magnetochron C28n. However, the magnetic polarities of the rocks are almost entirely reversed and inconsistent with a normal polarity.

The initial break-up of Pangæa elicited by Late Palæozoic deglaciation.

The break-up of Pangæa was principally facilitated by tensional plate stress acting on pre-existing suture zones. The rifting of Pangæa began during the Early Permian along the southern Tethys margin and produced the lenticular-shaped continent known as Cimmeria. A mantle-plume model is ascribed to explain the rift-related volcanism but the NW-SE oriented Cimmerian rifts do not correlate well with pre-existing suture zones or 'structural heterogeneities' but appear to have a pertinent spatial and temporal association with Late Palæozoic glacial-interglacial cycles.