4.7 Article

A common type of mineralogical banding in serpentine crack-seal veins

Journal

EARTH AND PLANETARY SCIENCE LETTERS
Volume 564, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2021.116930

Keywords

crack-seal; serpentinite; lizardite; polygonal serpentine; chrysotile; repetitive slip

Funding

  1. Marsden Fund Council by the Royal Society of New Zealand [UOO1829]
  2. Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies
  3. Callaghan Innovation
  4. New Zealand Steel Ltd.

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The study identifies a new type of mineralogically banded serpentine crack-seal vein, where thin bands of chrysotile are followed by thicker bands of polygonal serpentine/lizardite. This suggests a common set of processes involving crack opening and sealing in various structural sites within serpentinite-bearing faults and shear zones.
Serpentine veins are ubiquitous in hydrated and deformed ultramafic rocks, and have previously been used to track fault kinematics and understand the evolution of environmental conditions during vein formation. However, difficulties in unambiguously identifying and mapping serpentine types at submicron to mm scales has limited our understanding of vein precipitation kinetics and growth histories. Using recently developed techniques of Raman spectroscopy mapping, combined with scanning- and transmission-electron microscopy, we describe a new type of mineralogically banded serpentine crack-seal vein in six samples from different settings around the world. In all of the studied samples, individual bands comprise a thin layer (similar to 0.4-2 mu m) dominated by chrysotile and a much thicker layer (similar to 0.5-30 mu m) dominated by polygonal serpentine/lizardite. Existing field and experimental data suggest that disequilibrium conditions immediately following crack opening may favour rapid precipitation of chrysotile along one of the crack margins. Subsequently, diffusional transport of elements favours slower precipitation of polygonal serpentine/lizardite which leads to crack sealing. The similarities in layer thicknesses and mineralogy exhibited by samples collected from extension and shear veins, dilational jogs, foliation surfaces, and the margins of phacoids, suggest that a common set of processes involving crack opening and sealing are active in a range of different structural sites within serpentinite-bearing faults and shear zones, potentially associated with repetitive slip events such as small repeating earthquakes. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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