Multiple Reinjections and Crystal-mush Compaction in the Beacon Sill, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica

The Beacon Sill, a member of the Jurassic Ferrar group of the Transantarctic Mountains, South Victoria Land, is a 150 m thick tholeiitic diabase intrusion. Uniform on a field and macroscopic scale, it displays chemical and textural variability indicative of a sustained and complex history of emplacement and differentiation. Emplacement of the sill consisted of at least two, and probably four, discrete massive injections of magma, each averaging similar to 35 m thick, over a time span of similar to 100 years. The final injection event is marked by a 30 m thick interval of significantly finer-grained rock at the sill center. These fine-grained textures can be successfully reproduced by combining the results of thermal and crystal growth models, but only if the sill was a multiple intrusion. With the exception of a minor reinjection event captured in the chilled margin of the sill, earlier reinjection events are not evident texturally, most probably because of textural overprinting during prolonged cooling after initial crystallization. The dominant process involved in the post-emplacement differentiation of the Beacon Sill was compaction-driven redistribution of interstitial liquid. Transfer of residual liquid from the compacting lower solidification front to the dilating upper solidification front resulted in characteristic chemical and mineralogical effects, such as the depletion of the lower half of the sill and the enrichment of the upper half of the sill in incompatible elements (e.g. TiO2, Zr) and modal granophyre. Based on thermodynamic models, most of the compaction occurred at a crystallinity of roughly 33%. Geochemical profiles are distinctly segmented, suggesting that the sill was repeatedly split and reinjected with fresh magma near the center after compaction had redistributed the interstitial liquid within the partially solidified magma. The recognition of evidence for reinjection and compaction in a macroscopically uniform, relatively quickly cooled sill suggests that these processes may be common in the construction of sills and other mesoscale igneous intrusions in general.