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Vaterite in a decrepitated diamond-bearing inclusion in zircon from a stromatic migmatite in the Chinese Sulu ultrahigh-pressure metamorphic belt

  • Chenhui Fei and Jingbo Liu ORCID logo
Published/Copyright: July 2, 2022
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American Mineralogist
From the journal American Mineralogist Volume 107 Issue 7

Abstract

Vaterite was identified in a decrepitated carbonaceous material (CM) bearing inclusion in zircon from a stromatic migmatite in the Chinese Sulu ultrahigh-pressure (UHP) metamorphic terrane. It is associated with nanometer to micrometer anhedral diamonds, aragonite, calcite, amorphous C-Si-O, and amorphous Zr-Si-O materials. The inclusion developed ofshoots and abundant indigenous holes. The C-Si-O material is carbon-rich and porous and shows diagnostic Raman bands of highly disordered CM, whereas the Zr-Si-O material is spherulitic or banded with little or no carbon. The observations from focused ion beam–scanning electron microscope (FIB-SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM) verify that both diamond and highly disordered CM are of indigenous origin. The formation pathway of vaterite means that an amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) phase occurred as the precursor of vaterite. The highly disordered CM contains the subsidiary bands at 1150 and 1250 cm−1 on the low-frequency side of the D1 band, suggesting that there exist aliphatic hydrocarbon chains. Thus, the highly disordered CM was derived from carbonization of some kind of organic species in the fluid inclusion. Decrepitation of inclusion resulted in an extremely high supersaturation state of the fluid that induced the precipitation of amorphous materials and released residual fluid out of the inclusion, which became dry and preserved vaterite and amorphous materials.

Keywords: Ultrahigh-pressure metamorphism; vaterite; diamond; fluid inclusion; migmatite; Dabie-Sulu orogenic belt

Acknowledgments and Funding

We thank Gu Lixin and Tang Xu for their assistance in FIB-SEM and TEM analyses, and Yang Jianjun for stimulating discussion and correcting the manuscript. We thank Lutz Nasdala and two anonymous reviewers for their thorough comments that greatly improved the manuscript. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41372080) and State Key Laboratory of Lithospheric Evolution (No. 201707).

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Received: 2020-12-23
Accepted: 2021-07-07
Published Online: 2022-07-02
Published in Print: 2022-07-26

© 2022 Mineralogical Society of America

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  8. Lumping and splitting: Toward a classification of mineral natural kinds
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  18. Transformation of Fe-bearing minerals from Dongsheng sandstone-type uranium deposit, Ordos Basin, north-central China: Implications for ore genesis
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https://doi.org/10.2138/am-2021-7940
Keywords for this article
Ultrahigh-pressure metamorphism; vaterite; diamond; fluid inclusion; migmatite; Dabie-Sulu orogenic belt

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Highlights and Breakthroughs
  2. Mineral evolution heralds a new era for mineralogy
  3. MSA Review
  4. Pauling’s rules for oxide-based minerals: A re-examination based on quantum mechanical constraints and modern applications of bond-valence theory to Earth materials
  5. A cotunnite-type new high-pressure phase of Fe2S
  6. Density determination of liquid iron-nickel-sulfur at high pressure
  7. On the paragenetic modes of minerals: A mineral evolution perspective
  8. Lumping and splitting: Toward a classification of mineral natural kinds
  9. Thermal expansion of minerals in the amphibole supergroup
  10. A multi-faceted experimental study on the dynamic behavior of MgSiO3 glass in the Earth’s deep interior
  11. Origin of β-cristobalite in Libyan Desert Glass: The hottest naturally occurring silica polymorph?
  12. Time-resolved Raman and luminescence spectroscopy of synthetic REE-doped hydroxylapatites and natural apatites
  13. Reexamination of the structure of opal-A: A combined study of synchrotron X-ray diffraction and pair distribution function analysis
  14. A first-principles study of water in wadsleyite and ringwoodite: Implication for the 520 km discontinuity
  15. Inclusions in calcite phantom crystals suggest role of clay minerals in dolomite formation
  16. Crystal-chemical reinvestigation of probertite, CaNa[B5O7(OH)4]·3H2O, a mineral commodity of boron
  17. Crystal structure determination of orthorhombic variscite2O and its derivative AlPO4 structure at high temperature
  18. Transformation of Fe-bearing minerals from Dongsheng sandstone-type uranium deposit, Ordos Basin, north-central China: Implications for ore genesis
  19. Vaterite in a decrepitated diamond-bearing inclusion in zircon from a stromatic migmatite in the Chinese Sulu ultrahigh-pressure metamorphic belt
  20. Oxygen diffusion in garnet: Experimental calibration and implications for timescales of metamorphic processes and retention of primary O isotopic signatures
  21. Oxidation state of iron and Fe-Mg partitioning between olivine and basaltic martian melts
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