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The Sudbury Igneous Complex of Ontario, Canada, is the remnant of a voluminous melt sheet produced in a few minutes by impact of a massive meteorite into continental crust 1.85 Ga ago. The transient cavity and melting zone reached the Moho and instantly (~2 min) relaxed to form a more familiar large, shallow crater holding a thick, superheated (~1700[degrees]C) melt sheet covered by ~2 km of breccia. There is little about the resulting bimodal igneous complex that resembles crystallization of well-known sheet-like bodies of similar composition. Yet, the norite and granophyre exhibit a remarkable similarity in isotopic and trace element compositions, suggesting an intimate common parentage from the surrounding crust. This petrogenetic enigma is explained here as a natural, unavoidable consequence of the impact process in the rapid formation of a superheated magmatic emulsion, which we take as the high-temperature equivalent of breccia. A wide spectrum of viscously discrete, interdispersed parcels of mafic and felsic liquids, reflecting the compositional heterogeneity of the target crustal materials, formed the emulsion. Within days to mouths, the emulsion components separated according to their relative densities into a bimodal norite-granophyre assemblage that formed the basic structure of the present Sudbury Igneous Complex. There is clear evidence of this emulsion in the earliest dikes (i.e., offsets), which likely give the earliest state of the nascent melt sheet. Immediately following emulsion separation, the strongly superheated bimodal melt sheet underwent vigorous thermal convection in each layer. These convective motions homogenized and rapidly cooled the magma to the liquidus temperatures, whereupon convection ceased. The pattern of convection was pinned in place by the embayment topography of the crater floor, which in turn played a pivotal role in directing sulfide deposition into the embayments. All further cooling was by conduction of heat through the upper and lower boundaries during which time solidification fronts were established and propagated inward from the upper and lower margins. There is clear evidence of solidification from the floor upward and the roof downward. Minimal differentiation and compositional modification took place throughout cooling and solidification. Nevertheless, during the solidification stage, granitic rock fragments on the crater floor and rafts of fallback breccia from the thick overlying Onaping Formation became unstable and entered the melt sheet, and the partially melted remnants collected at the interface between the norite and granophyre. Some interstitial melt from the norite also percolated upward, and, altogether, the blocks and melt produced the distinctive chemical and physical characteristics of the unusual Transition Zone. The Sudbury melt sheet is, in essence, a full-scale magmatic experiment. The conditions of formation, relative to any other large terrestrial magma, are 'precisely' known. Thus the clear lack of any significant modal layering, the overall homogeneous nature of each unit, and the lack of any significant chemical differentiation through crystal fractionation establish Sudbury as a valuable example of what does not happen under the initial conditions long assumed to prevail at the formation of most large magma chambers. Keywords: magma, viscous emulsion, Sudbury, melt sheet, impact melt, differentiation.

Orthosilicate staurolite weathers slowly under natural conditions due to either the stable kyanite-like ribbons or the low site-energy of the Fe regions. The etch pits are disk-shaped, and are wide parallel to the plane of weak bonding and cleavage (010) and narrow perpendicular to (010). The kinetics of weathering is interface-limited rather than transport limited. Staurolite is unable to form protective covering layers in spite of a sufficient Al content due to slow weathering. The slow weathering restricts the release of Al in concentrations greater than that of secondary minerals.

Petrographic and geochemical profiles collected through a ~250-m-thick Nipigon diabase sill near Black Sturgeon Lake, Ontario, constrain the complex emplacement and differentiation processes that controlled the magmatic evolution of these rocks: several nested reinjections of phenocryst-bearing magma, compactiondriven redistribution of mildly evolved interstitial liquids in the central portion of the sill, and segregation of highly-evolved interstitial liquids into micropegmatitic veins near the upper contact. These processes impact not only the silicate mineralogy of the rocks, but also distribution of sulfide phases. Both petrographic and geochemical data demonstrate that the sill was gradually inflated via several discrete injections of olivine-bearing magma. Plagioclase crystal size trends exhibit several reversals that are correlated with increases in olivine abundance and bulk-rock MgO content. These textural and compositional reversals are attributed to reinjections of olivine-bearing magma into partially solidified magma from earlier injections. Mixing between evolved resident magma and reinjections of less-evolved magma is commonly proposed as a mechanism for triggering sulfide mineralization. In this sill, which contains no significant mineralization, localized minor enrichments and depletions in copper content are associated with the margins of a well-constrained reinjection horizon. Chemical differentiation of the magma was controlled by three distinct processes: flow differentiation, crystal-mush compaction, and solidification front instability. Although the mineralogy of the sill is dominated by plagioclase and clinopyroxene, major-oxide compositional variations are largely controlled by the mechanical concentration of olivine via flow differentiation or phenocryst redistribution within the individual reinjection pulses. This redistribution of phenocryst phases is the primary factor controlling the major-element composition of the rocks in most of the sill. In the central portion of the sill, the abundances of incompatible trace elements are influenced by the compaction of partially crystalline mush and the expulsion of incompatible-rich interstitial liquid. This is recognized by a negative correlation between the alignment of plagioclase crystals and concentrations of incompatible trace elements such as Zr. Finally, there is a ~2.5-m-thick silicic segregation approximately 32 m below the upper contact, whose composition is consistent with residual liquid after ~65 to 85% fractional crystallization of magma with a composition equivalent to that of the marginal rocks. Similar veins and patches are common throughout the upper 50 m of the sill, indicating that this segregation process was common and widespread during the cooling and crystallization of the sill. The complexity of intrusion and differentiation in this sill, despite its generally unremarkable texture and composition, suggests that many diabase sills may have experienced a range of processes that have previously been recognized to impact the petrologic evolution of larger igneous systems, and that these processes can be identified in minor intrusions such as sills and dikes using simple and robust analytical techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]