Sorcha McMahon is a third year PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. Sorcha is investigating how strange igneous rocks called carbonatites may have formed, using both natural samples and high-pressure experiments.
As part of my undergraduate MSci course at the University of Cambridge, I carried out a project investigating a collection of thin sections from peridotite xenoliths from northern Tanzania. The main aim of this research was to constrain the petrogenetic evolution of the lithospheric mantle beneath the East African Rift (EAR) and adjacent Tanzanian Craton. Techniques employed included the electron microprobe (EMPA) and LA-ICP-MS to characterise the major and trace element contents of constituent minerals in garnet-bearing lherzolite and harzburgite mantle xenoliths. For the first time globally, we found ultra-depleted pyrope garnets from Lashaine peridotites displaying rare earth element (REE) patterns similar to those of hypothetical garnets proposed to have formed in the subcontinental lithospheric mantle prior to any metasomatism*.