Elements; August 2008; v. 4; no. 4;
p. 247-252; DOI: 10.2113/GSELEMENTS.4.4.247
© Mineralogical Society of America
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FIGURE 1 Elemental mantle abundances relative to carbonaceous chondrite. The
stair-step depletion pattern is a function of the affinity of each group of
elements for iron; thus, lithophile elements, which have no affinity for iron,
occur at the chondrite concentration level in the terrestrial mantle, whereas
the PGE, Re, and Au, which are "iron-loving elements," are
depleted by two orders of magnitude relative to chondritic meteorites. The
uniform depletion of these highly siderophile elements cannot be modelled by
metallic melt-silicate melt partition coefficients determined at 1 bar
pressure. The use of high-pressure metallic melt-silicate melt partition
coefficients can reconcile the abundance of Pd
(Righter et al. 2007) but not
that of Pt (Ertel et al.
2006). FIGURE ADAPTED FROM DRAKE AND
RIGHTER (2002)
AND COTTRELL ANDWALKER
(2006)
Copyright © 2009 by Mineralogical Society of America
