Sulfur isotope characterization of primordial and recycled sources feeding the Samoan mantle plume

Abstract Understanding present-day mantle heterogeneity is key to understanding the geochemical evolution of our planet. The Samoan islands are the type locality for the Enriched Mantle (II) reservoir that is thought to be produced from the subduction and recycling of marine sediment from upper continental crust. In addition to hosting extreme radiogenic isotope compositions from the EM II reservoir, Samoa also exhibits contributions from other mantle reservoirs in a dilute form including the EM (I) (recycled continental material), HIMU (recycled oceanic crust), and DMM (depleted upper mantle) mantle reservoirs. The plume system feeding the Samoan islands sits above a seismically imaged Large Low Shear Velocity Province (LLSVP) and an Ultra-Low Velocity Zone (ULVZ) that is thought to contribute, in addition to recycled components, the recently discovered early-formed (primordial) components with negative μ 182 W and high 3He/4He. Recent work measuring sulfur isotopes in ocean island basalts has established that recycled oceanic and continental crust host unique S-isotope compositions that can be identified at various hotspot localities. Here we document previously unknown relationships between Δ 33 S and radiogenic tungsten, helium and lead isotopes from 7 Samoan basalts (from the islands of Ofu, Vailulu'u and Malumalu) that suggest mixing between several endmembers. One, a HIMU influence that has slight positive Δ 33 S and positive δ 34 S; another, related to EM II that has near zero Δ 33 S and positive δ 34 S; a third, which is primordial with negative μ 182 W, high 3He/4He, that has Δ 33 S = 0 and negative δ 34 S. From this, we conclude that the indistinguishable Δ 33 S of the primordial endmember from that of the convective mantle indicates that sulfur isotopes were homogenized early in Earth's history. The Vailulu'u sample with HIMU characteristics, carries a small but resolvable Δ 33 S that allows, but does not require mass-independent Archean Δ 33 S to shift the Δ 33 S. The observed correlations involving Δ 33 S support arguments linking Pb, He, and W geochemistry to a deep mantle process and places constraints on questions related to the sources of mantle geochemical heterogeneity.