Crystal chemical and 57Fe Mössbauer study of chromite from the Nuggihalli schist belt (India)

In the Nuggihalli schist belt (India), chromite bodies were affected by intense serpentinization followed by weathering. In spite of the strong oxidation of the chromite grains, some unaltered cores were preserved, and they were characterised using electron probe microanalysis, single-crystal X-ray diffraction and low temperature 57Fe Mossbauer spectroscopy. Results of such investigations revealed that chromite cores from the Nuggihalli schist belt are effectively not oxidised, and their study revealed that chromite was not affected by greenschist-facies metamorphism. The apparently highly ordered cation distribution of the chromites, which would suggest low equilibration temperature, is just caused by the very high Cr contents, which prevent Mg–Al exchange between T and M sites. Using Fabries (1979) geothermometer a temperature of about 1180 °C was retrieved (Mitra and Bidyananda, 2003), which therefore corresponds to the quenched-in igneous equilibrium.