A LATE ULTRAMAFIC SUITE IN THE KAP-EDVARD-HOLM LAYERED GABBRO COMPLEX, EAST GREENLAND

The Kap Edvard Holm Complex is an early Tertiary layered gabbro situated on the western side of the Kangerdlugssuaq fjord. Layered olivine gabbros in the Taco Point area are cut by several wehrlitic sill-like bodies which comprise a late ultramafic suite. An intrusive wehrlitic facies in the inner part of the bodies consists of olivine (+minor chrome-spinel) orthocumulate with clinopyroxene oikocrysts and interstitial plagioclase, kaersutite and phlogopite. A replacive facies which occurs in the marginal zones is texturally similar to the intrusive facies but contains no chrome-spinel and is more feldspathic, varying from a melanocratic olivine gabbro to a feldspathic wehrlite. It occurs where the sills wedge out laterally, in the lower contact zones where finger structures are widely developed, and in the upper contact zones where wehrlitic pipes feed melanocratic sheets, called parasol structures, which preferentially follow mafic layers in the host olivine gabbro. The wehrlites formed by the intrusion of hot, hydrous, ultrabasic magma into consolidated layered olivine gabbro. The replacive facies was formed by the volume for volume metasomatic replacement of olivine gabbro; dissolution of plagioclase was accompanied by crystallization of olivine. Some clinopyroxene was initially resorbed and later reprecipitated during this process. The relatively dense pore magma migrating upwards was restricted to pipes and spread out laterally when it encountered readily replaced mafic layers, while below the sills gabbro was replaced en masse and finger structures were formed. Similar late ultramafic suites occur in ophiolites, and their presence in the Kap Edvard Holm Complex supports suggestions that it acted as an ocean ridge type magma chamber during the initiation of early Tertiary sea floor spreading in the North Atlantic.