Mineral variation in anorthositic, troctolitic, and adamellitic rocks of the Barth Island layered structure in the Nain anorthosite complex, Labrador

The Barth Island layered structure is an oval, 6 by 9 km body, consisting of rhythmically layered adamellitic rock in the center which grades outward through jotunite into troctolite. Farther outward the sequence repeats itself in reversed order, strongly reduced in magnitude and finer grained; the adamellitic zone is followed by jotunite which grades into coarse-grained leuconorite and into anorthosite of the Nain complex. The Barth Island structure, having an inverted conical base topped by a hemispherical depression, seems to represent a distorted sequence of rock layers with troctolite at the bottom, grading upward into adamellitic rocks which grade into anorthosite at the top. Trend-surface analysis demonstrates the regional variation of plagioclase and orthopyroxene compositions in the troctolite—adamellite sequence of the central part of the structure. The fits for the second- and third-degree surfaces are good and significant at the 99 percent level. The regression line for compositional variation in coexisting plagioclase and orthopyroxene in all analyzed rocks has a correlation coefficient of r² = 0.78. The difference between the trends in the troctolite—adamellite sequence and the anorthosite—adamellite sequence is insignificant. The regression curve for compositional variation in coexisting orthopyroxene and olivine has a correlation coefficient of r² = 0.98. The curve shows good correlation with the experimentally established partitioning curve of Medaris, which indicates that equilibrium conditions prevailed during formation of the olivine—ortho-pyroxene pairs. The results suggest that the troctolite—adamellite sequence and the anorthosite—adamellite sequence are products of fractional crystallization, possibly from the same parental magma.