Minette bodies and cognate mica-clinopyroxenite xenoliths from the Milk River area, southern Alberta: records of a complex history of the northernmost part of the Archean Wyoming craton

Abstract

Minettes exposed in southern Alberta near the Milk River are the northern outliers of the Eocene Sweet Grass Hills igneous complex of the Montana alkalic igneous province. These minettes often contain coarse-grained xenoliths of phlogopite + clinopyroxene ± apatite. The parent magmas of the minettes were generated at pressures [Formula: see text]17 kbar in equilibrium with clinopyroxene + phlogopite ± olivine. Fractional crystallization and mixing provided a spectrum of evolved minettes and cumulates, the latter of which were sampled by subsequent minette magmas as xenoliths. Two xenoliths were dated at 49.0 ± 0.8 Ma and 52 ± 1.7 Ma. The host dyke of the latter xenolith gave an age of 50 ± 0.3 Ma. The minettes and their xenoliths have overlapping values of 87Sr/86Sri, εNdT, 206Pb/204Pb, 207Pb/204Pb, and 208Pb/204Pb, similar to those of alkaline igneous rocks from farther south in the Montana alkalic igneous province. The Sweet Grass Hills lie north of the Great Falls Tectonic Zone, previously interpreted as a Proterozoic suture zone separating the Archean Medicine Hat block from the Archean Wyoming craton to the south. Geochemical data for the Milk River minettes provide evidence for a history of the mantle underneath the Medicine Hat block, similar to that found previously for mantle-derived rocks of the Wyoming craton, including a significant Proterozoic mantle enrichment event. Given this similarity, we suggest that the Wyoming craton extends into southern Alberta, and that the Great Falls Tectonic Zone does not represent a Proterozoic suture of two Archean blocks.