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The island of Maupiti : the oldest emergent volcano in the Society hot spot chain (French Polynesia)

¹ Géosciences Rennes, UMR 6118, Université de Rennes 1, 35042 Rennes, France.
² CEA/DASE, B.P. 12, 91680 Bruyères-le-Chatel, France.
³ CEA/LSCE, Domaine du CNRS, 91198 Gif-sur Yvette, France.
⁴ LGCA, Maison des Géosciences, 1381 rue de la Piscine, 38041 Grenoble, France.
⁵ UMR 6538 "Domaines Océaniques", Université de Bretagne Occidentale, 6 avenue Le Gorgeu, BP 809, 29285 Brest, France.

Abstract

The island of Maupiti is the top of an eroded volcanic shield surrounded by a large lagoon and coral reef. The most important part of this shield is made up of alkali basaltic lavas grading upward into hawaiitic flows. The shield-building event is dated at ca. 4.51 ± 0.04 Ma. A few mugearitic and benmoreitic late dykes were emplaced at 4.21 ± 0.04 Ma. These chronological data are consistent with a Pacific plate motion of 11 cm/year with respect to a fixed Society plume. The Maupiti lava series results from the effects of fractional crystallisation of a parental alkali basalt magma displaying a prominent EM II isotopic and trace element signature, in many ways similar to that of the youngest Society hot spot lavas. This feature suggests that the geochemical signature of the Society plume did not change through time.

Key Words: Intraplate volcanism • Basalt • Mugearite • Benmoreite • Fractional crystallisation • French Polynesia • South Pacific

This article has been cited by other articles:

				C. CORDIER, J.-P. CLEMENT, M. CAROFF, C. HEMOND, S. BLAIS, J. COTTEN, C. BOLLINGER, P. LAUNEAU, and G. GUILLE Petrogenesis of Coarse-grained Intrusives from Tahiti Nui and Raiatea (Society Islands, French Polynesia) J. Petrology, November 1, 2005; 46(11): 2281 - 2312. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]