¹Jean-Christophe Viennet,¹Sylvain Bernard,²Corentin Le Guillou,¹Violaine Sautter,³Brian Grégoire,¹Albert Jambon,¹Sylvain Pont,¹Olivier Beyssac,¹Brigitte Zanda,¹Roger Hewins,¹Laurent Remusat
Astrobiology (in Press) Link to Article [http://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2020.2345]
¹Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Institut de Minéralogie, Physique des Matériaux et Cosmochimie, CNRS UMR 7590, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, F-75005 Paris, France
²Université Lille, CNRS, INRA, ENSCL, UMR 8207 – UMET – Unité Matériaux et Transformations, Lille, France.
³Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Université de Poitiers, UMR 7285 IC2MP-Hydrasa, Poitiers, France.

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¹J. Gregory Shellnutt,¹M.P. Manu Prasanth
Icarus (in Press) Link to Article [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2021.114531]
¹National Taiwan Normal University, Department of Earth Sciences, 88 Tingzhou Road Section 4, Taipei 11677, Taiwan
Copyright Elsevier

Anorthosite is a plutonic igneous rock composed almost entirely of plagioclase feldspar. Telluric planets may initially develop a primary anorthositic crust before lithospheric recycling processes commence. Non-primary anorthosite forms as a consequence of accumulation of plagioclase that crystallizes from basaltic or primitive mafic/ultramafic magma. Here we show that fractional crystallization modeling of parental magma compositions similar to basalt identified on Venus can yield plagioclase with anorthite contents typical of non-primary anorthosites of Earth. Using terrestrial anorthosite typology, we conclude that analogues of Archean megacrystic anorthosite, layered mafic intrusion anorthosite, and anorthosite inclusions are likely to be present within the crust of Venus. Proterozoic massif-type anorthosite, if present, would likely be restricted to the highland terranes of Ishtar Terra and Ovda Regio whereas oceanic anorthosites are unlikely to be present. Furthermore, our results indicate that the leucite-rich cumulate rock known as italite may also exist within the Venusian crust.