Correlations between silicic volcanic rocks of the St Mary's Islands (southwestern India) and eastern Madagascar: implications for Late Cretaceous India-Madagascar reconstructions

The St Mary's Islands (southwestern India) expose silicic volcanic and sub-volcanic rocks (rhyolites and granophyric dacites) emplaced contemporaneously with the Cretaceous igneous province of Madagascar, roughly 88-90 Ma ago. The St Mary's Islands rocks have phenocrysts of plagioclase, clinopyroxene, orthopyroxene and opaque oxide, moderate enrichment in the incompatible elements (e.g. Zr = 580-720 ppm, Nb = 43-53 ppm, La/Ybn = 6.9-7.2), relatively low initial 87Sr/86Sr (0.7052-0.7055) and near-chondritic initial 143Nd/144Nd (0.51248-0.51249). They have mineral chemical, whole-rock chemical and isotopic compositions very close to those of rhyolites exposed between Vatomandry-Ilaka and Mananjary in eastern Madagascar, and are distinctly different from rhyolites from other sectors of the Madagascan province. We therefore postulate that the St Mary's and the Vatomandry-Ilaka-Mananjary silicic rock outcrops were adjacent before the Late Cretaceous rifting that split Madagascar from India. If so, they provide a valuable tool to check and aid traditional Cretaceous India-Madagascar reconstructions based on palaeomagnetism, matching Precambrian geological features, and geometric fitting of continental shelves. Supplementary materialMineral analyses, mass-balance calculations and locality information are available at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18332