metamorphism and deformation along the emplacement thrust of the samail ophiolite oman abstract the base of the samail ophiolite is a metamorphic shear zone that provides key information about ophiolite emplacement the classic exposure of this metamorphic sole at wadi tayin consists of a few meters of garnet clinopyroxene mafic gneiss and 80 m of upper amphibolite facies mafic and quartzose tectonite overlying 150 m of lower amphibolite facies mafic and sedimentary schist the sole is bounded by faults but is internally coherent peak metamorphic temperatures decrease exponentially from 825 c at the top of the sole to 500 c at its base as documented by changes in grain size hornblende composition the disappearance of chlorite and epidote garnet clinopyroxene element partitioning and garnet hornblende partitioning the inverted peak temperature gradient decreases from 4000 c km in the upper 50 m to 100 c km in the lower 150 m contrary to earlier reports greenschist facies tectonites are not present at wadi tayin although the entire sole underwent greenschist facies retrogression driven by the influx of fluids from the overlying peridotite or underlying carbonate calculations based on an amphibolite constitutive relation reveal that although the section represents a lithologic continuum the lower 200 m of the sole is a relatively undeformed block whereas the uppermost 25 m represent material initially separated by tens to a couple of hundreds of kilometers and now integrated into a single column

processes in magma chambers beneath spreading axes evidence from magmatic associations in the oman ophiolite ophiolite complexes where complete consist of tectonized ultramafic rocks overlain by layered gabbros and peridotites isotropic gabbros and plagiogranites a sheeted dyke swarm and pillowed volcanics this pseudo stratigraphy has been interpreted as oceanic crust and upper mantle dewey bird 1971 moores vine 1971 the base of the crust being drawn at the base of the layered series malpas 1978 in oman this succession is particularly well exposed in a 500 km long 14 km thick ophiolite nappe of upper cretaceous age glennie et al 1973 magmatic associations in its lower crustal and upper mantle portions oceanic layers 3 and 4 are currently being studied to determine the processes of magma supply and fractionation in oceanic magma chambers in the first section of this report we list the evidence for the greater part of the plutonic sequence of the ophiolite forming in a dynamic long lived open system magma chamber beneath a spreading axis in the second section the remainder of the plutonic sequence is described as a series of later short lived possibly closed system off axis plutons a fuller treatment of magma chamber processes during the spreading event is presented elsewhere smewing in press the earliest and volumetrically most significant magmatic event is represented by up to 3 5 km of layered gabbros and peridotites and an overlying unit of up to 200 m of isotropic gabbros and plagiogranites intruding the base of the sheeted dyke swarm the layered series rests with a sharp contact

floating lids on large mid ocean spreading center magma chambers a discussion rosencrantz and nelson 1982 have concisely presented arguments in favor of the hypothesis that lids overlying ocean ridge magma chambers are supported by flotation of the lid on magma of equal or higher density i concur that given the highly fractured nature of oceanic crust the lids to oceanic magma chambers can only be supported by flotation regardless of the width of the magma chamber in their quantitative analysis rosencrantz and nelson implicitly made two assumptions on the shape of the magma chamber and therefore on the nature and density of the lid and on the nature and therefore the density of the contents of the magma chamber it is important to realize that in a situation in which either one of these assumptions is thought not to hold the acceptance of the flotation hypothesis places severe constraints on other properties of the situation the problem is raised in the light of the archean ocean ridge model of sleep and windley 1982 fig 3 in the same issue of journal of geology but is of general relevance given our ignorance concerning magma chambers there have been several suggestions for the shape of ocean ridge magma chambers in situations where permanent magma chambers are thought to exist sleep 1975 rosendahl 1976 and dewey and kidd 1977 envisaged a magma chamber narrowing upwards with a triangular cross section and a relatively flat base hereafter this shape is referred to as an inverted funnel from their work on the samail ophiolite in oman pallis

crustal processes at spreading centers recent discoveries and research on mid ocean ridges mor s in the last four years have greatly increased our knowledge of this fundamental type of plate boundary the last iugg review of mor research was in 1975 aumento et al 1975 and its omission as a topic in 1978 may have reflected a feeling that spreading centers were reasonably well understood since that time however there has been a surfeit of important new observations and exciting research and there is now a turmoil of innovative ideas about the processes which create and leave their imprint on two thirds of the earth s crust new seismic measurements have been made and interpreted as evidence for the existence of shallow axial magma chambers amc beneath intermediate total opening rate 5 9 cm yr and fast 9 18 cm yr spreading centers fig 1 yet there is controversy as to whether they are steady state whether they persist beneath slow ridges as well in the steady state what the dimensions and shape of the chamber are its relation to oceanic crustal stratigraphy and its relation to observations in ophiolites black smoker hydrothermal vents have been discovered in the pacific spewing forth 350 c fluids blackened by polymetallic sulfide precipitates this discovery is embroiled in debate as to how long the vents last whether they occur at slow spreading rates as well whether the enormous heat flux of the vents freeze the magma chamber even at fast spreading rates their influence on geochemical balances in the ocean and the value of the sulfide deposits commercially it has been found that our initial view of mor s as two dimensional linear structures has served us well as an initial working model but must be significantly modified to account for variations in tectonic volcanic and hydrothermal activity along strike as well as for episodicity of these processes deep sea drilling project dsdp samples have raised fundamental questions about formation of the magnetic source layer hydrothermal circulation and fault mechanisms along the mor spreading centers which penetrate existing lithosphere along strike as propagating rifts have modified our views of how plate boundaries reorient themselves and how v shaped magnetic and topographic trends are formed we have also found that transform faults may modify spreading center processes for some distance away from their intersections with mor s and that rigid plate transform faults may fail to develop at fast spreading centers under certain conditions resulting in en echelon overlapping of spreading centers this review will focus on these developments and several others only example references to these topics will be given in the text and many important topics will not be discussed directly e g petrology and geochemistry mantle convection research on lithosphere older than 1 m y however i have tried to compile and have included an extensive bibliography for u s research on a broader range of mor topics for mid 1978 to mid 1982 which is the main purpose of this report pre 1978 references are occasionally included where appropriate abstracts are not included

interpreting magmatic fabric patterns in plutons abstract most plutons have widespread magmatic fabrics the interpretation of which remains controversial we propose a method to constrain likely causes of fabric patterns the application of which indicates the following 1 preserved fabric patterns often form after chamber construction and only rarely provide information about ascent or emplacement 2 fabrics are poor recorders of total strain and are easily reset preserving only the last increment of strain during crystallization 3 in magmatic systems mechanically decoupled from host rocks patterns may result from strain during internally driven flow filter pressing or porous flow in relatively static chambers or by final increments of strain during emplacement 4 with greater emplacement depths fabric patterns increasingly reflect strain caused by regional deformation and 5 given that magmatic fabrics are easily reset and reflect only the last increment of strain of comparatively weak materials they may provide a relatively direct record of paleostress in orogenic belts

shear criteria in granite and migmatite deformed in the magmatic and solid states microstructural criteria for the determination of the sense of shear in rocks homogeneously deformed in the partially melted state are similar to those which apply to solid state deformation sense of shear determination is either direct deduced from the sense of rotation of markers or indirect involving the obliquity between the shear and foliation planes or between the successive foliations imprinted at different stages of progressive deformation this study is a by product of the detailed structural and microstructural investigation of a high grade metamorphic rock pile variscan vosges massif france which underwent subhorizontal shearing during partial melting and further solidification depending on the rock chemistry on the position in the pile and the relative timing of progressive deformation layered migmatites and homogeneous granites were variously deformed in the partially melted and solid states the sense of shear obtained from these rock types using the criteria presented here consistently gives a top to sw direction

rheology of granitic magmas during ascent and emplacement flow abstract considerable progress has been made over the past decade in under standing the static rheological properties of granitic magmas in the continental crust changes in h2o content co2 content and oxidation state of the interstitial melt phase have been identified as important compositional factors governing the rheodynamic behavior of the solid fluid mixture although the strengths of granitic magmas over the crystallization interval are still poorly constrained theoretical investigations suggest that during magma ascent yield strengths of the order of 9 kpa are required to com pletely retard the upward flow in meter wide conduits in low bagnold number magma suspensions with moderate crystal contents solidosities 0 1 0 3 viscous fluc tuations may lead to flow differentiation by shear enhanced diffusion ams and mi crostructural studies support the idea that granite plutons are intruded as crystal poor liquids 50 with fabric and foliation development restricted to the final stages of emplacement if so then these fabrics contain no information on the ascent verti cal transport history of the magma deformation of a magmatic mush during pluton emplacement can enhance significantly the pressure gradient in the melt resulting in a range of local macroscopic flow structures including layering crystal alignment and other mechanical instabilities such as shear zones as the suspension viscosity varies with stress rate it is not clear how the timing of proposed rheological transitions formulated from simple equations for static magma suspensions applies to mixtures undergoing shear new theories of magmas as multiphase flows are required if the full complexity of granitic magma rheology is to be resolved

constraints on the accretion of the gabbroic lower oceanic crust from plagioclase lattice preferred orientation in the samail ophiolite abstract oceanic crust represents more than 60 of the earth s surface and despite a large body of knowledge regarding the formation and chemistry of the extrusive upper oceanic crust there still remains significant debate over how the intrusive gabbroic lower oceanic crust is accreted at the ridge axis the two proposed end member models the gabbro glacier and the sheeted sills predict radically different strain accumulation in the lower crust during accretion in order to determine which of these two hypotheses is most applicable to a well studied lower crustal section we present data on plagioclase lattice preferred orientations lpo in the wadi khafifah section of the samail ophiolite we observe no systematic change in the strength of the plagioclase lpo with height above the crust mantle transition no dominant orientation of the plagioclase a axis lineation and no systematic change in the obliquity of the plagioclase lpo with respect to the modal layering and macroscopic foliation evident in outcrop these observations are most consistent with the sheeted sills hypothesis in which gabbros are crystallized in situ and fabrics are dominated by compaction and localized extension rather than by systematically increasing shear strain with increasing depth in a gabbro glacier our data support the hypothesis of macleod and yaouancq 2000 that the rotation of the outcrop scale layering from sub horizontal in the layered gabbros to sub vertical near the sheeted dikes is due to rapid vertical melt migration through upper gabbros close to the axial magma chamber additionally our results support the hypothesis that the majority of extensional strain in fast spreading ridges is accommodated in partially molten regions at the ridge axis whereas in slow and ultra slow ridges large shear strains are accommodated by plastic deformation

structure of the sheeted dike complex of the samail ophiolite near ibra oman the sheeted dike complex is a regionally mappable geologic unit with a consistent position in the samail ophiolite stratigraphy discontinuous exposures of the complex in the ibra area of the southeast oman mountains provide structural data that allow reconstruction of a paleo spreading ridge axis of 347 for the region and suggests a maximum spreading width of 275 km for the ophiolite contact relations within the well exposed al ahmadi section indicate that the complex was formed by multiple parallel intrusion over a narrow zone at the paleo ridge axis split dikes are abundant facing directions indicate a spreading ridge southwest of the present outcrop area in conflict with other spreading axis direction indicators

uranium lead isotopic ages of the samail ophiolite oman with applications to tethyan ocean ridge tectonics plagiogranites are a minor but widespread component of the samail ophiolite plutonic member they crystallized from the most fractionated melts generated by magmatic crystallization and differentiation of a steady state magma chamber beneath the tethyan spreading ocean ridge and their ages are thought to mark the time of ocean crust formation isotopic u pb ages of zircons from 13 plagiogranites collected along a 270 km segment of the samail ophiolite subparallel to the regional trend of the sheeted dike complex the former spreading ridge axis direction define a narrow time interval of 93 5 97 9 m y with a pronounced clustering about 95 m y the zircon ages of the plagiogranites agree remarkably well with the early cenomanian to early turonian biostratigraphic ages of sediments that are intercalated within the ophiolite pillow lavas and that lie just above them tippit et al 1981 the agreement of radiometric and biostratigraphic ages provides strong support for the conclusion that the plagiogranite u pb ages closely date the time span of ocean crust formation no step changes in age patterns are observed along the ridge axis sheeted dike direction suggesting that there are no major internal offsets of the ophiolite by transform or other faults along most of the traverse one possible exception occurs at the southeastern end of the sampled interval ibra area where a 3 m y discontinuity might be caused by an unmapped fault assuming that the regional trend of the sheeted dikes n10 25 w marks the direction of the former spreading ridge axis the present array of sample localities spans a distance of 130 to 195 km normal to that axis i e in the spreading direction the data as a whole do not define a clear cut age trend normal to the spreading axis but by eliminating samples that may be aberrant due to faulting the data array suggests a pattern of increasing ages from east to west this would indicate that the samail ophiolite is derived from the western southwestern side of the tethyan spreading system a conclusion reached independently from geological evidence also the gentle age gradient in the spreading direction i e between 130 and 195 km of ocean crust were formed within an age span of no more than 2 m y suggests a very fast spreading rate this conclusion also is supported by independent geologic evidence

the biostratigraphy of sediments in the volcanic unit of the samail ophiolite sedimentary rocks of pelagic and ocean ridge affinity interbedded with or overlying the volcanic sequence at the top of the oman ophiolite contain datable radiolarian faunas that indicate 1 that the lavas were erupted in an oceanic environment during a narrow time interval ranging from the early cenomanian to the early turonian and 2 that the age progression within this volcanic sequence matches its development from a ridge axis to an off axis setting emplacement of the ophiolite has been dated as late campanian early maestrichtian glennie et al 1974 thus the time gap between formation and emplacement was very narrow

pluton accommodation at high strain rates in the upper continental crust the example of the central extremadura batholith spain abstract emplacement in the tensional bridge of a stepped dextral shear zone system is proposed for the central extremadura batholith spain the country rocks show a pervasive anisotropy that conditioned the style of the structures developed as a consequence of the transference of displacement from the stepped shear zones to the releasing area the kinematic evolution of the resulting megakink fold provided the volume increase necessary for the granite emplacement thermal and kinematic models suggest that the growth of individual plutons took place in periods of no more than several hundred to a few thousand years fast strain rates 10 10 10 11 s 1 must concentrate in local structures e g initiation of kink folds even in zones deforming as a whole under typical strain rates 10 14 1 s 1 granite plutons might be used as strain rate gauges for syn plutonic structures

fabric evidence for granodiorite emplacement with extensional shear zones in the variscan gredos massif spanish central system abstract three granitoid bodies in the central part of the gredos massif spanish central system batholith are tabular around 1 km in thickness and intruded into a migmatitic middle crust during the d3 deformation phase of the variscan orogeny petrologically they are composed of bt granodiorite and crd monzogranite and they show varying abundance of large cm scale feldspar megacrysts a detailed study of the shape preferred orientation spo magmatic fabric defined by these megacrysts together with a kinematic analysis of the structures due to interactions between them and the measurement of quartz c axis fabrics in migmatites and granitoids suggests that granitic magma and country rocks were mechanically coupled during deformation the emplacement took place along large scale extensional shear zones active during the first stages of the d3 phase the shape of the spo ellipsoids varies from constrictional at the centre of the granitic bodies to flattening or even oblate at their external contacts with the migmatitic host rocks the favoured interpretation of this spatial fabric variation is the overprinting of the emplacement fabrics by a constrictional tectonic regime associated with the growth of tabular magma chambers along extensional detachments followed by shear zone development commonly at the top of the granitic bodies the entire structure was later folded during the last stages of the d3 phase

quantitative analysis and scaling of sheared granitic magmas we present a quantitative treatment of the macroscopic behaviour of a sheared granitic magma using biot s theory biot 1941 and a shear dilatancy sensitive material model for the solids the calculations are relevant to a magma in the solidosity range 0 55 0 7 the resulting excess pore pressure distribution is a function of the position and the time results are presented in graphical form a scaling emerges that enables the results to be presented in non dimensional form a sensitivity study is carried out of the parameters describing the rheology of the solid matrix including permeability features the model enables the estimate of pressure and flow rates thus opening a way of understanding the features in the granite crystal mush that are caused by upflowing magma at high strain rates 10 10s 1 flow rates due to shear far exceed melt movement due to buoyancy effects

shear induced pressure changes and seepage phenomena in a deforming porous layer i summary we present the results of an analytical investigation into the deformation behaviour of a threelayer permeable material that provides solutions of the stress equilibrium equations and the equation of continuity coupled with darcy s law two distinct regimes are investigated the first is the one in which the externally applied fluid pressures are significant the second is the limit in which these pressure increases are insignificant the typical time constant for the process is derived in the latter case the long term behaviour of the fluid pressure in the three layers is entirely determined by the applied shear stress rate and a stable steady state appears when there is an external fluid pressure increase no steady state settles and the leading term in the long time expansion is proportional to the time t the instability that is created in this way needs examination as the hydraulic failure that is associated with it will take place at the position where the pressure increase is greatest note that the flow that follows from the pressure gradient is greatest in the vicinity of the top layer which is presumed to be more permeable k 1 k 2 10 3 all this holds for slow processes where the time constant is long compared to the consolidation time the stress state in the material in the vicinity of the granular layer becomes therefore more anisotropic which may cause the surrounding material to fail the problem of melt extraction in a flattening and deforming plume head at the base of the lithosphere was investigated for a fixed loading rate of 10 15 s 1 e xcess pressures and flow rates are of the order 10 7 to 10 9 pa and ca 1 0 13 ms 1 respectively increasing with increasing rate of shear evaluation of the ratio of hydrostatic pressure to isotropic stress points to hydraulic fracturing as a potentially important aspect of the long term deformation behaviour

rheology of a two phase material with applications to partially molten rocks plastic deformation and saturated soils a global model is presented to account for the specific rheology of a two phase material examples of observations are taken from a crystallising magma applications are ported to a partially molten rock plastic deformation and soil liquefaction the general behaviour of the viscosity is drawn as a function of the strain rate and the amount of solid phase it constitutes a 3d diagram developing a cubic surface the cubic equation is justified by thermodynamic considerations it basically results from the mixing of a newtonian n 1 and a power law n 3 type of deformation the diagram shows two types of rheological response at high strain rate values the viscosity contrast between the two phases is the lowest a bulk en masse behaviour results as observed during tectonic activity it manifests by a homogeneous transport of magma during emplacement and fabric development an equivalent medium with averaged viscosity is a good proxy conversely at low strain rate values the viscosity contrast between the two phases is the highest the two end members behave according to their respective rheology in between a transitional state develops in which instability occurs depending on the strain rate and stress conditions it manifests in the 3d diagram by a cusp shape rheology presents continuous jumps between the liquid like and the solid like rheology they result in strain localisation or phase segregation the later preferentially develops during magma crystallisation deformation under a constant amount of each phase is also possible resulting in pressure dissolution like processes a major cause for instability results from a bifurcation in the solution plane of the equation of viscous motion it is comparable with strain softening a similar situation should develop when mixing newtonian and power law rheology as during diffusion and dislocation creep or water saturated sediment deformation owing to the continual jumps between the two types of rheology hysteresis or memory effect may develop rapid cyclic deformation may drive strain to extreme straining the effect of simple shear seems much more effective than pure shear compaction to segregate the weak phase out of its strong matrix the development of instabilities and continuous jumps from one rheology to the other lead to discontinuous motion of the weak phase in a molten region it corresponds to discontinuous burst of magma that are extracted

submagmatic microfractures in granites microstructures in hercynian granite plutons of the pyrenees indicate fracturing of plagioclase crystals in the presence of melt this is represented mainly by quartz and or feldspar that fills fractures electron microprobe analyses demonstrate that in compositional agreement with the rims of the zoned plagioclase the feldspar infillings are more sodic with decreasing melt fraction fracturing resulted from concentration of stress at contacts between grains while the granite was submagmatic i e when the melt was below the critical fraction for magmatic flow material compositionally far from eutectic is petrologically the best candictate to develop submagmatic fractures because during cooling the volume fraction of melt remains low for a large temperature range a strong tendency for microfractures to be oblique to flow foliation may constitute a new criterion for shear sense in magmas

igneous emplacement in a shear zone termination the biotite granite at strontian scotland deformed xenolith strain data together with other structural information indicate that the biotite granite body 90 sq km of the strontian complex scotland was emplaced in the extensional termination of a dextral transcurrent shear zone this shear zone is a splay of the major great glen fault which lies along the southern boundary of the granite siting of the shear zone splay was probably controlled by a a slight releasing bend in the great glen fault in this area and b a large pre existing asymetric synform in proterozoic metasedimentary country rocks which intersects the great glen fault trace at a high angle a model is proposed in which moine thrust caledonian compression at ca 435 ma activated the great glen fault dextrally dextral movements around the releasing bend detached a flat segment from the inside fault wall and the biotite granite was emplaced side ways at depths of about 15 km as a sheet into this extensional listric fault bounded cavity

assessing in situ microcrack damage using ultrasonic velocity tomography abstract to characterize the damage induced during excavation of a test tunnel in granite ultrasonic wave velocity and amplitude measurements were made in situ around one quadrant of the tunnel sixteen 1 m deep boreholes were drilled into the tunnel wall these boreholes spanned the region from tensile stress induced damage in the sidewall to compressive stress induced damage in the well developed notch measurements were made by pulsing a source transducer at numerous points within a given borehole and on the tunnel surface and then capturing the transmitted ultrasonic waves at transducers located in the adjacent borehole the travel times of the waves between sources and receivers were used to compute the average velocities and to construct two dimensional 2d tomographic images wave velocities and amplitudes in the tensile stress region are low and show significant anisotropy indicating the presence of oriented microcracks even as deep as 1 m from the tunnel wall velocities and amplitudes are higher in the compressive stress region and show lower anisotropy indicating the rock is relatively undamaged away from the tunnel wall the velocity anisotropy indicates that the dominant orientation of microcrack planes is everywhere tangential to the tunnel wall even though the minimum principal stress is tangential and tensile in the sidewall the distribution of microcracks inferred from these results is consistent with the extensive microseismicity detected during and after excavation and suggests that both the stress history and current stress state have impacted the current state of damage around the tunnel

experimental deformation of partially melted granitic aggregates abstract the effects of varying amounts of partial melt on the deformation of granitic aggregates have been tested experimentally at conditions 900 c 1500 mpa 10 4 to 10 6 s where melt free samples deform by dislocation creep with microstructures approximately equivalent to those of upper greenschist facies experiments were performed on samples of various grain sizes including an aplite 150 m and sintered aggregates of quartz albitemicrocline 10 50 and 2 10 m water was added to the samples to obtain various amounts of melt 1 15 in the aplite 1 5 in the sintered aggregates optical and tem observations of the melt distribution in hydrostatically annealed samples show that the melt in the sintered aggregates is homogeneously distributed along an interconnected network of triple junction channels while the melt in the aplites is inhomogeneously distributed the effect of partial melt on deformation depends an melt amount and distribution grain size and strain rate for samples deformed with 1 melt all grain sizes exhibit microstructures indicative of dislocation creep for samples deformed with 3 5 melt the 150 m and 10 50 m grain size samples also exhibit dislocation creep microstructures but the 2 10 m grain size samples exhibit abundant tem scale evidence of dissolution precipitation and little evidence of dislocation activity suggesting a switch in deformation mechanism to predominantly melt enhanced diffusion creep at natural strain rates melt enhanced diffusion creep would predominate at larger grain sizes although probably not for most coarse grained granites the effects of melt percentage and strain rate have been studied for the 150 m aplites for samples with 5 and 10 melt deformation at 10 6 s squeezes excess melt out of the central compressed region allowing predominantly dislocation creep conversely deformation at 10 5 s produces considerable cataclasis presumably because the excess melt cannot flow laterally fast enough and a high pore fluid pressure results for samples with 15 melt deformation at both strain rates produces cataclasis presumably because the inhomogeneous melt distribution resulted in regions of decoupled grains which would produce high stress concentrations at point contacts at natural strain rates there should be little or no cataclasis if an equilibrium melt texture exists and if the melt can flow as fast as the imposed strain rate however if the melt is confined and cannot migrate a high pore fluid pressure should promote brittle deformation

mixing characteristics and compositional differences in mantle derived melts beneath spreading axes evidence from cyclically layered rocks in the ophiolite of north oman within the ophiolite of north oman interlayered gabbros and peridotites form a unit up to 3 5 km thick between pervasively foliated harzburgites and dunites of mantle origin and isotropic gabbros and plagiogranites spatial and chemical relationships within this sequence require the existence of a large reservoir 20 km wide 3 5 km high of tholeiitic magma that was periodically replenished by mantle derived picritic to tholeiitic melts during the spreading process cyclicity in the appearance of minerals during cooling of the magma is marked by the repetition of stratigraphies in the layered rocks within these cyclic units basal peridotites with magnesian olivines and pyroxenes are abruptly overlain by gabbros with less magnesian mafic phases this abrupt discontinuity is explained by density stratification set up at the base of the chamber whenever a picritic melt influx occurs by virtue of its greater density than tholeiitic magma sparks et al 1979 any picritic magma emplaced into the base of the tholeiitic magma reservoir would spread out along the floor of the chamber with only limited mixing taking place across the liquid liquid interface cooling of this basal layer by contact with the cooler overlying magma would result in the precipitation of olivine chrome spinel pyroxene from the picritic liquid this process would continue until the now more evolved input liquids were incorporated into the tholeiitic magma resevoir the precipitation of a gabbroic layer would then take place until a new magma input occurred to repeat the cycle variable thicknesses of the cyclic units different liquid lines of descent and various entry points within the liquid line of descent represented by the lowermost layered rocks reveal that the input liquids varied in volume primary composition and the extent and nature of prefractionation in the mantle liquids expelled from the chamber as lavas and dykes are shown to be more fractionated than liquids precipitating the layered rocks and are considered to have undergone additional fractionation within a zone of underplated gabbro and plagiogranite beneath the dyke swarm the existence of a large magma reservoir supports earlier interpretations based on age tilton et al 1981 and geochemical data pearce 1980 that the oman ophiolite is an analogue for fast spreading ridges