Continental Flood Basalt Chemistry, Age and Volcanic Volumes (original) (raw)

Abstract

We have compiled a large collection of published chemical analyses of the 11 known continental flood basalts of the last 250 millions years. Only basaltic lavas and some related basic intrusive rocks are considered to be representative of the major episodes. Differentiation trends exhibit varying amounts of scatter, the trends for SiO2, FeO, and TiO2 are quite well defined, have slopes of the same sign, and can be represented adaquately by straigth lines. In contrast, the trends of CaO, Al2O3 and Na2O are often poorly defined. There are clear differences in major element abundances between volcanic suites, particularly for elements with well defined slopes. The results of our regressions are generally consistent with those of Turner and Hawkesworth (1995), Peng et al (1994) and Lassister and DePaolo (1997), although some differences exist. Examination of the global data base shows that there are systematic global variations in continental flood basalt chemistry that correlate with a...

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