Formation of Spongy Clinopyroxene: Insights from Eclogitic Inclusions in Diamonds
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Spongy clinopyroxene is common in most mantle-derived xenoliths and megacrysts of eclogitic and peridotitic parageneses. Its formation is commonly attributed to the partial melting of a primary clinopyroxene in response to various factors, including changes in pressure and temperature or infiltration of external melts or fluids. In order to study the mechanism of spongy clinopyroxene formation in detail, we selected six eclogitic clinopyroxene inclusions in diamonds with varying amounts of spongy clinopyroxene (from ~10 to 100%). We employed computed tomography, electron microprobe analysis, and Raman spectroscopy to study the textural characteristics, major element concentrations, and the types of volatiles present in both phases. We also used pMELTS to model the compositions of spongy clinopyroxene and associated melts produced by the melting of primary clinopyroxene over a range of pressures and temperatures. We compare these results with estimates from major element thermobarometry of the spongy clinopyroxene. We conclude that the studied spongy clinopyroxene is the solid product of partial melting that occurs upon decompression of the primary clinopyroxene within the diamond in a near-closed system. Melting of the primary clinopyroxene occurred continuously or in pulses at different depths during the diamond’s ascent to Earth’s surface and produced variable spongy clinopyroxene and melt compositions even within the same inclusion. This is possible due to relatively rapid kimberlite ascent. The degrees of melting are various and unexpectedly high for mantle melting (between <10 and 60% with an average of ~20–30%). The produced melts are highly silicic, phonolitic, and alkali-rich. pMELTS modelling shows the spongy clinopyroxene compositions can be reproduced at pressures between 0.5–2.7 GPa and temperatures of 850–1300°C, with the majority of them satisfying the P–T conditions of 1–2 GPa and 1100–1300°C. This indicates decompression melting of primary clinopyroxene at shallow upper mantle or lower crustal conditions.
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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 it