Suzanne Birner’s article on mantle oxygen fugacity is now published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. In this contribution, we show a broad congruence in the oxygen fugacity recorded in basalts and in peridotites from the Southwest Indian Ridge. While the two proxies for fugacity are in overall agreement, peridotites also indicate local redox heterogeneity. […]
Research by Katie Kumamoto, Jessica Warren, and colleagues on the strength of olivine has been published in Science Advances. Our research suggests that tectonic plates are weaker than previously thought due to a size effect in olivine, the most abundant mineral in the Earth’s mantle. The article is summarized by Karen Roberts in this UDaily […]
Fred Davis’s paper in American Mineralogist is now published and open access: Davis, F.A., E. Cottrell, S.K. Birner, J.M. Warren, and O.G. Lopez, 2017. Revisiting the electron microprobe method of spinel-olivine-orthopyroxene oxybarometry applied to spinel peridotites, American Mineralogist, 102, 421-435, doi:10.2138/am-2017-5823.
In an open access article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lars Hansen, Jessica Warren, and Chao Qi use experiments on olivine aggregates to show that the base of the lithosphere is best represented by thermal models that predict a gradational boundary. The deformation experiments indicate that changes in seismic anisotropy […]
An article by Suzanne Birner, Jessica Warren, Liz Cottrell, and Fred Davis has been published in the July issue of the journal Geology. This article is available online via open access. In the Pacific Ocean, north of New Zealand, the collision of two tectonic plates has created the Tonga Trench, a massive gash in the […]
Mantle anisotropic viscosity results from the crystallographic alignment of olivine and influences a variety of large-scale geodynamic processes. This study, lead by Lars Hansen, presents torsion and extension experiments on pre-textured olivine aggregates to provide constraints on olivine viscous anisotropy. We found that the magnitude of anisotropy is similar among the different deformation geometries tested. […]
This review article presents a global compilation of abyssal peridotite compositions, demonstrating that their compositions reflect a combination of melting, melt-rock interaction and source heterogeneity. This article is open access. Warren, J.M., 2016. Global variations in abyssal peridotite compositions, Lithos, 248-251, 193-219, doi:10.1016/j.lithos.2015.12.023.
Megan D’Errico’s paper on the geochemistry of peridotites from the Arctic Ocean has been published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. Based on modeling of peridotite compositions, we show that the presence of refractory harzburgites and thin overlying oceanic crust are best explained by low degrees of melting of a previously melted, heterogeneous mantle. D’Errico, M.E., […]
This review article on Re-Os-Pb isotopes in mantle sulfides has been published following the Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry short course on Highly Siderophile and Strongly Chalcophile Elements. This article is open access. Harvey, J., J.M. Warren and S.B. Shirey, 2016. Mantle sulfides and their role in Re-Os-Pb isotope geochronology, Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry, […]