Geochronology and Petrogenesis of the Archean Silicic Volcanoplutonic Series of the Verkhovtsevo Greenstone Structure,Ukraine

Geological and isotope-geochemical studies of acid volcanics in the Verkhovtsevo greenstone belt and surrounding tonalite-trondhjemite plutons within the central Dnieper gneiss-green- stone terrain were conducted in the search for genetic relationships and increased understanding of the petrogenesis of acid melts. The acid volcanic and plutonic rocks are similar in mineral composition and form a unified calc-alkaline-like trend from dacite/tonalite to rhyolite/ trondhjemite. Dacites and tonalites have the same rare-earth element (REE) patterns with moderately fractionated light and heavy REE as well as small negative Eu anomalies. Rhyolite and trondhjemites have less-fractionated REE patterns with larger negative Eu anomalies. Whole-rock data for the acid volcanic and plutonic rocks yielded a single isochron of 3117 ± 204 Ma, εNd = +1.14 ± 0.80.

The data suggest a temporal and genetic relationship between the acid volcanics of the greenstone sequences and the surrounding plutonic rocks; both appear to belong to a single suite. The positive eNd value tends to suggest that a source of their melts can be traced to mafic materials rather than to older sialic crust. Petrochemical data and REE-model calculations suggest that dacite/tonalite liquids might have formed during partial melting of a mafic source, such as Archaean tholeiite TH-1 in equilibrium with hornblende-pyroxene-plagioclase restite. Subsequent differentiation of these melts in equilibrium with titanoilmenite-pyroxene-plagioclase cumulate may have given rise to the trondhjemites and rhyolites. Such a mineralogy of the restite and cumulate phases suggests that felsic melts containing little water in the Verkhovtsevo greenstone belt were generated at depths up to 30 km, probably in the greenstone belt's mafic basement.