New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

The Mount Taylor Volcanic Field at the southeastern edge of the Colorado Plateau, New Mexico erupted diverse alkaline magmas from ~3.8 to 1.5 Ma (Crumpler, 1980; Perry et al., 1990). The earliest eruptions include high silica topaz rhyolites of Grants Ridge (plagioclase, quartz, biotite) and Si-under saturated basanites and trachytes at Mt Taylor stratovolcano. Mt. Taylor was later constructed of stacks of thick, trachyandesitic to rhyolitic lava flows that were subsequently eroded into a ~4-km across amphitheatre opening toward the southeast. Early Mt. Taylor rhyolitic lavas exposed within the amphitheatre contain quartz, plagioclase, hornblende, and biotite (± sanidine) phenocrysts. Later cone-building trachydacite to trachyandesite lavas are crystal-rich with plagioclase and augite megacrysts (± hornblende, ± quartz) and record an overall trend of decreasing SiO₂ with time. The last eruptions ~1.5 Ma from the stratovolcano (Perry et al. 1990) produced thick (>70 m), viscous lava flows that contain up to 50% zoned plagioclase phenocrysts. While SiO₂ decreased among the silicic magmas, the degree of silica saturation increased among peripheral basaltic magmas from basanite to ne-normative hawaiite and hy-normative basalts. Evidence of increasing crustal contamination within the basalts includes zoned plagioclase megacrysts, augite and plagioclase cumulate texture xenoliths with accompanying xenocrysts. These textures within the basalts combined with abundant, complex plagioclase among the conebuilding silicic magmas imply interaction and mixing with a gabbroic cumulate mush pile in the lower crust beneath Mt. Taylor Volcano. Contemporaneous basanitic to trachytitc volcanism in the northern part of the volcanic field at Mesa Chivato (Crumpler, 1980) was more widely distributed, smaller volume, and produced mainly aphyric magmas. The lower crustal gabbroic cumulates either do not extend northward beneath Mesa Chivato, or they were not accessed by lower magma flux rate in that part of the volcanic field.