On Elan Bank, a southwestern promontory of the Kerguelen Plateau in the southern Indian Ocean, we cored an interval of conglomerate and minor sandstone within a thick section of Cretaceous flood basalts. Most of the detritus in these sedimentary rocks is volcanic with the exception of a small amount of conspicuous material of probable continental derivation. The anomalous clasts include several pebbles of gneiss (Nicolaysen et al., 2001) and garnet sand grains. The presence of continental material on the plateau bears significantly on the interpretation of Indian Ocean basalts (Weis et al., 2001). The purpose of the present study was to determine the composition of the garnets to provide additional constraints on the nature of the source area.
1Reusch, D.N., and Yates, M., 2002. Data report: Compositions of garnet sand grains from Elan Bank, Kerguelen Plateau (ODP Site 1137). In Frey, F.A., Coffin, M.F., Wallace, P.J., and Quilty, P.G. (Eds.), Proc. ODP, Sci. Results, 183 [Online]. Available from World Wide Web: <http://www-odp.tamu.edu/publications/183_SR/006/006.htm>. [Cited YYYY-MM-DD]
2Department of Geological Sciences, University of Maine, Orono ME 04469-5790, USA. Correspondence author: reusch@maine.edu
Initial receipt: 27 June 2001
Acceptance: 14 February 2002
Web publication:
24 May 2002
Ms 183SR-006