Melt infiltration in a crystal mush and pegmatoid formation in the platiniferous Merensky Reef, Bushveld Complex, South Africa
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Giant mafic-ultramafic layered intrusions of Archaean-Proterozoic age are the fossilised remnants of huge injections of silicate magma in the Earth’s crust and are our most important repositories of platinum-group elements. Magmatic PGE-rich ore deposits, such as the Merensky Reef, are typically hosted in stratiform reefs at the contacts between ultramafic and feldspathic cumulates. The Merensky Reef is commonly characterised by coarse-grained and pegmatoidal textures that may provide important clues to its origin. We present textural and in situ geochemical data for Merensky pegmatoids at Styldrift Mine (Impala Bafokeng) in the Western Bushveld Complex of South Africa. This region is adjacent to an inferred magmatic feeder zone to the Bushveld. The Merensky pegmatoids are characterised by (i) amoeboid olivine inclusions in zoned orthopyroxene megacrysts with increasing molar Mg# of orthopyroxene towards olivine, (ii) fine-grained chains of orthopyroxene in compositional equilibrium with adjacent orthopyroxene megacrysts, (iii) increasing molar Mg# of orthopyroxene megacrysts and increasing molar An with decreasing 87 Sr/ 86 Sr i (at 2.06 Ga) of plagioclase oikocrysts in pegmatoids laterally across a 10-km section distal to the feeder, and (iv) highly variable molar An and initial 87 Sr/ 86 Sr i of interstitial plagioclase proximal to the feeder. We interpret the coarse-grained and pegmatoidal textures, their dissolution-reprecipitation features, and lateral chemical variations as the product of lateral melt infiltration and mixing in a crystal mush. We suggest that the platiniferous Merensky Reef was not formed at the base of a large melt-filled magma chamber but was instead the product of non-sequential magma emplacement that rejuvenated the crystal mush.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".