The parent magma of the Nakhla (SNC) meteorite, inferred from magmatic inclusions

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Magma, Meteoritic Composition, Shergottites, Nakhlites, Chassignites, Mars Surface, Chemical Analysis

Scientific paper

The Nakhla meteorite, one of the SNC group, is most likely a sample of the Martian crust. It is an igneous rock, a cumulate of augite and olivine, that does not represent a magma composition. Samples of its parent magma were trapped as magmatic inclusions in its cumulus olivine crystals. Motivated by three previous studies showing disagreements about the composition of Nakhla's parent magma, an attempt is made to determine the composition by an analytic method different from those of previous studies. The samples used in this study are polished petrographic thin sections of the Nakhla meteorite. A suggested parent magma was derived from element distribution between augite and basaltic magma, but that calculation (Longhi and Pan, 1989) relied on an incorrect augite composition. Using a correct augite composition in that calculation yields a parent magma much closer in composition to NK93, which is an estimate of Nakhla's parent magma originally trapped in the inclusions. NK93 is basaltic, rich in iron, and poor in aluminum compared to terrestrial basalts. It is found that three independent approaches (Harvey and McSween, 1992a; Longhi and Pan, 1989; and the present one) converge in requiring that Nakhla originally formed from a low-Al, low MgO/FeO basalt like NK93.

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