The late Cretaceous Kızıldağ ophiolite forms one of the best exposures of oceanic lithospheric remnants of southern Neotethys to the north of the Arabian promontory in Turkey. The ultramafic to mafic cumulate rocks, displaying variable thickness (ranging from 165 to 700 m), are ductiley deformed, possibly in response to syn-magmatic extension during sea-floor spreading and characterized by wehrlite, olivine gabbro, olivine gabbronorite and gabbro. The gabbroic cumulates have an intrusive contact with the wehrlitic cumulates in some places. The crystallization order of the cumulus and intercumulus phases is olivine (Fo86–77)± chromian spinel, clinopyroxene (Mg#92–76), plagio-clase(An95–83), orthopyroxene(Mg#87–79). The olivine, clinopyroxene, orthopyroxene and plagioclase in ultramafic and mafic cumulate rocks seem to have similar compositional range. This suggests that these rocks cannot represent a simple crystal line of descent. Instead the overlapping ranges in mineral compositions in different rock types suggest multiple magma generation during crustal accretion for the Kızıldağ ophiolite. The presence of high Mg# of olivine, clinopyroxene, orthopyroxene, and the absence of Ca-rich plagioclase as an early fractionating phase co-precipitating with forsteritic olivine, suggest that the Kızıldağ plutonic suite is not likely to have originated in a mid-ocean ridge environment. Instead the whole-rock and mineral chemistry of the cumulates indicates their derivation from an island arc tholeiitic (IAT) magma. All the evidence indicates that the Kızıldağ ophiolite formed along a slow-spreading centre in a fore-arc region of a suprasubduction zone tectonic setting.

The plutonic crustal sequence exposed northeast of Sabzevar is part of the ophiolitic belt of Sabzevar that occurs along the northern margin of the Central Iran micro-continent. The sequence includes olivine and pyroxene gabbro with cumulate characteristics, isotropic gabbro, foliated gabbro and a diabase sheeted dyke complex cut by wehrlite and olivine websterite intrusions, and pegmatite gabbro and plagiogranite as small intrusions and dykes. The sequence is comparable to gabbros in known ophiolite complexes. Microscopic studies show an abundance of the mesocumulate and heteradcumulate textures that represent open system magma chambers, which are common in supra-subduction zones. The olivine → plagioclase → clinopyroxene → ± orthopyroxene → amphibole trend of mineralization in the gabbros, similar to mid-ocean ridge basalt (MORB), and olivine → clinopyroxene → ± orthopyroxene → plagioclase → amphibole, similar to arc rocks, indicate the diversity in the formation of these rocks, and represent petrographic evidence of their formation in a supra-subduction zone. The rocks have calc-alkaline to tholeiitic affinities, and niobium depletion in the spider diagrams of diabase that matches the patterns of island arc magma. These patterns, and the light rare earth element enrichment of the diabase and plagiogranite, suggest the effect and introduction of the fluids, originating from the subducting slab, beneath the mantle wedge. The low titanium compositions, matching those of arc diabase and plagiogranite, plot in the island arc to MORB tectonomagmatic fields, and suggest formation of the Sabzevar ophiolitic plutonic crustal sequence in a supra-subduction zone during Late Cretaceous time.

The Eastern Layered Intrusion of the Rum Central Complex, NW Scotland, comprises 16 macro-units broadly defined by a basal peridotite body overlain by gabbros and troctolites. The local term for the upper plagioclase-bearing cumulates is ‘allivalite’. The Unit 12 allivalite contains five subsidiary peridotite horizons, each continuous on the kilometre scale. Field, textural and geochemical evidence points to the Unit 12 allivalite forming by progressive accumulation of crystals from up to seven separate magma batches, varying from picrite to basalt. The thickness of the magma lens in the sill-like chamber was as low as 30 m during a significant part of the development of the Unit 12 allivalite, and evidence supports one eruption from the chamber during its accumulation.

I-type granites can be assigned to low- and high-temperature groups. The distinction between those groups is formally based on the presence or absence of inherited zircon in relatively mafic rocks of a suite containing less than about 68% SiO2, and shown in many cases by distinctive patterns of compositional variation. Granites of the low-temperature group formed at relatively low magmatic temperatures by the partial melting dominantly of the haplogranite components Qz, Ab and Or in H2O-bearing crustal source rocks. More mafic granites of this type have that character because they contain restite minerals, often including inherited zircon, which were entrained in a more felsic melt. In common with other elements, Zr contents correlate linearly with SiO2, except sometimes in very felsic rocks, and Zr generally decreases as the rocks become more felsic. All S-type granites are apparently low-temperature in origin. After most or all of the restite has been removed from the magma, these granites may evolve further by fractional crystallisation. High-temperature granites formed from a magma that was completely or largely molten, in which zircon crystals were not initially present because the melt was not saturated in that mineral. High-temperature suites commonly evolved compositionally through fractional crystallisation and they may extend to much more mafic compositions through the production of cumulate rocks. However, it is probable that, in some cases, the compositional differences within high-temperature suites arose from varying degrees of partial melting of similar source rocks. Volcanic equivalents of both groups exist and show analogous differences. There are petrographic differences between the two groups and significant mineralisation is much more likely to be associated with the high-temperature granites. The different features of the two groups relate to distinctive source rock compositions. Low-temperature granites were derived from source rocks in which the haplogranite components were present throughout partial melting, whereas the source materials of the high-temperature granites were deficient in one of those components, which therefore, became depleted during the melting, causing the temperatures of melting to rise.

The mid-Miocene Aztec Wash pluton is divisible into a relatively homogeneous portion entirely comprising granites (the G zone, or GZ), and an extremely heterogeneous zone (HZ) that includes the products of the mingling, mixing and fractional crystallisation of mafic and felsic magmas. Though far less variable than the HZ, the GZ nonetheless records a dynamic history characterised by cyclic deposition of the solidifying products of the felsic portion of a recharging, open-system magma chamber.

Tilting has exposed a 5-km section through the GZ and adjacent portions of the HZ. A porphyry is interpreted as a remnant of a chilled roof zone that marks the first stage of felsic GZ intrusion. Subsequent recharging by felsic and mafic magma, reflected by repeated cycles of crystal accumulation and melt segregation in the GZ and emplacement of mafic flows in the HZ, rejuvenated and maintained the chamber. Kilometre-scale lobes of mafic HZ material were deposited as prograding tongues into the GZ during periods of increased mafic input. Thus, they are lateral equivalents of the cumulate GZ granites with which they interfinger. Conglomerate-like units comprising rounded, matrix-supported intermediate clasts in cumulate granite are located immediately above the lobes. These ‘conglomerates’ appear to represent debris flows shed from sloping upper surfaces of the lobes. Thus, the GZ can be viewed as comprising distal facies, remote from the site of mafic recharging in the HZ, and the HZ as comprising proximal facies.

Elemental chemistry suggests that the GZ cumulate granites represent a second-stage accumulation from an already evolved melt, and that coarse, more mafic, feldspar+biotite+accessory mineral ± hornblende rocks trapped between mafic sheets in the HZ are the initial cumulates. Fractionated melt accumulated roofward and laterally, and was the direct parent of the ‘evolved’ GZ cumulates. The most highly fractionated, fluid-rich melts accumulated at the roof.

The 6845 ± 50 BP climactic eruption of Mount Mazama discharged 47 ± 9 km3 of vertically zoned calc-alkaline magma, affording a virtually complete section through the chamber. Evidence for two andesitic parents with different trace-element (particularly Sr) and water contents is preserved in the ejecta. Prior to eruption, a dominant volume of rhyodacite was underlain successively by high-Sr andesite, high-Sr crystal mushes, and low-Sr crystal mushes. Intergranular liquids in the high-Sr magmas were probably richer in water than those in the low-Sr magmas. Thermal continuity throughout the ejecta favours eruption from a single, zoned reservoir. Insight into chamber development is given by preclimactic rhyodacitic lavas and tephra erupted between about 30,000 BP and the climactic eruption. The oldest of these lavas, contaminated derivatives of low-Sr magma, contain crystal-poor magmatic inclusions of low-Sr andesite; the youngest has inclusions of high-Sr andesite and, like rhyodacitic pumice in the climactic ejecta, is hybrid magma containing an admixed high-Sr component. A model for steady-state growth of the chamber is inferred whereby repeated recharge, first by low-Sr then high-Sr andesite (± basalt), builds up a cumulate succession, while derivative liquid fractionates convectively, segregates, and mixes with an incrementally growing silicic volume. The magma chamber at Mount Mazama may provide insight into the evolution of some granitoid plutons.

In an attempt to establish a chronology for volcanic neck emplacement and so elucidate petrogenesis, isotopic studies have been carried out on various cumulate inclusions, blocks and megacrysts which occur chiefly in association with tuffs infilling several Scottish vents. K-Ar ages of 13 samples of low-pressure cumulate minerals (biotite, hornblende and pyroxene) from necks in East Fife indicate crystallisation at shallow depth at 314 Ma. U-Pb analyses of zircons are concordant at 318 Ma suggesting they are also members of this suite and their formation is penecontemporaneous with the Namurian volcanic activity which is welldocumented stratigraphically. By 295 Ma crystallisation of anorthoclase megacrysts had been completed, perhaps from the fractionated residuum. An eruption from considerable depth (within the stability field of garnet precipitation) then broke through to the surface bearing high-pressure megacrysts. This penetrated and disrupted the early cumulates carrying them to the surface and producing the diverse vent assemblages. K-Ar dating of basanites suggest that the Duncansby Ness neck in Caithness was emplaced around 270 Ma in the early Permian. For two Fife necks the balance of evidence favours an age of 290 Ma (Stephanian) for this final explosive activity associated with vent formation.