¹Charles K. Shearer, ¹Stephen M. Elardo, ²Noah E. Petro, ³Lars E. Borg,¹Francis M. McCubbin
¹Institute of Meteoritics, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, U.S.A.
²NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, U.S.A.
³Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550, U.S.A.

The Mg-suite represents an enigmatic episode of lunar highlands magmatism that presumably represents the first stage of crustal building following primordial differentiation. This review examines the mineralogy, geochemistry, petrology, chronology, and the planetary-scale distribution of this suite of highlands plutonic rocks, presents models for their origin, examines petrogenetic relationships to other highlands rocks, and explores the link between this style of magmatism and early stages of lunar differentiation. Of the models considered for the origin of the parent magmas for the Mg-suite, the data best fit a process in which hot (solidus temperature at ≥2 GPa = 1600 to 1800 °C) and less dense (ρ ~3100 kg/m3) early lunar magma ocean cumulates rise to the base of the crust during cumulate pile overturn. Some decompressional melting would occur, but placing a hot cumulate horizon adjacent to the plagioclase-rich primordial crust and KREEP-rich lithologies (at temperatures of

Reference
Shearer CK, Elardo SM, Petro NE, Borg LE, McCubbin FM (2015) Origin of the lunar highlands Mg-suite: An integrated petrology, geochemistry, chronology, and remote sensing perspective. American Mineralogist, 100,294-325
Link to Article [doi: 10.2138/am-2015-4817]

Copyright: The Mineralogical Society of America