Highly siderophile element behaviour during flood basalt genesis and evidence for melts from intrusive chromitite formation in the Mackenzie large igneous province

Modelling of absolute and relative HSE abundances in global CFB reveals that HSE concentrations decrease with increasing fractionation for melts with < 8 ± 1 wt.% MgO, with picrites (> 13.5 wt.% MgO) from CFB (n = 98; 1.97 ± 1.77 ppb) having higher Os abundances than ocean island basalt (OIB) equivalents (n = 75; 0.95 ± 0.86 ppb). The differences between CFB and OIB picrite absolute Os abundances may result from higher degrees of partial melting to form CFB but may also reflect incorporation of trace sulphide in CFB picrites from magmas that reached S-saturation in upper-crustal magma chambers. Significant inter-element fractionation of (Re + Pt + Pd)/(Os + Ir + Ru) are generated during magmatic differentiation in response to strongly contrasting partitioning of these two groups of elements into sulphides and/or HSE-rich alloys. Furthermore, fractional crystallization has a greater role on absolute and relative HSE abundances than crustal contamination under conditions of CFB petrogenesis due to the dilution effect of continental crust, which has low total abundances of the HSE. Combined data for the basaltic and intrusive portions of the Mackenzie LIP indicate a mantle source broadly within the range of the primitive upper mantle. The majority of Archaean komatiites and Phanerozoic CFB also require mantle sources with primitive upper mantle to chondritic Re/Os evolution, with exceptions typically being from analyses of highly-fractionated MgO-poor basalts.