Petrogenesis of the Nechalacho Layered Suite, Canada: Magmatic Evolution of a REE–Nb-rich Nepheline Syenite Intrusion
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The 2176 Ma peralkaline and agpaitic Nechalacho Layered Suite (NLS) is the youngest and most evolved member of the Paleoproterozoic Blatchford Lake Igneous Complex, which comprises a series of gabbro, granite, quartz syenite and nepheline syenite intrusive rocks that were emplaced within the Slave Craton of Canada. The nepheline–sodalite syenites of the NLS form a laccolithic intrusive body >4 km2 in plan and >1·1 km deep that crops out at Thor Lake, Northwest Territories, in the centre of the complex. Igneous layering is defined by variable proportions of nepheline, sodalite, end-member aegirine and annite, K-feldspar, albite and eudialyte. Two layers in the upper part of the intrusion, the Basal Zone and the Upper Zone, host one of the world’s largest rare earth element (REE) and niobium resources, the Nechalacho Rare Metal Deposit. The principal magmatic REE–Nb-mineral is kentbrooksite (a eudialyte group mineral); fluornatropyrochlore, bastna&x0308;site-(Ce) and fluorbritholite-(Ce) occur in minor proportions. Based on whole-rock and mineral chemistry and phase equilibria for the NLS and cogenetic granitoids, the units of the Blatchford Lake Igneous Complex are considered to have formed by batch melt extraction from a deep crustal magma chamber in which a mantle-derived, heterogeneous mafic parental melt underwent fractional crystallization. The magma that crystallized to form the NLS represents the final and most evolved batch. It was essentially magnesium-free and highly enriched in Zr, REE, Nb, carbon species, fluorine and chlorine. Based on its mineralogy, the NLS crystallized from ∼800 to < 500 °C at a pressure of ∼4 kbar and oxygen fugacity initially below the annite–aegirine equilibrium (QFM + 0·2 to QFM + 1·3 at 500–882 °C, where QFM is the quartz–fayalite–magnetite buffer); f O2 later increased in response to auto-oxidation of the residual melt by annite crystallization. In situ fractional crystallization of the intrusion proceeded both upwards and downwards. Early crystallization of REE–Nb–Zr minerals was inhibited owing to the low melting temperature of eudialyte. The REE, Nb, Zr and volatile species (fluorine, carbon) were enriched in an iron-rich residual melt until the magma became saturated with respect to eudialyte, forming cumulates and layers containing interstitial eudialyte in the upper part of the intrusion. Mineral fractionation during internal crystallization led to large variations in light/heavy REE, Zr/Hf and Nb/Ta, with the Basal Zone recording the strongest heavy REE enrichment.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".