Rochas ultramáficas plutônicas do greenstone belt Rio das Velhas na porção central do Quadrilátero Ferrífero, Minas Gerais, Brasil

Abstract

In Amarantina, district of Ouro Preto (State of Minas Gerais, Brazil), ultramafic rock exposures are found along two areas of about 500 m2 each. The rocks crop out in the Bação complex, which is the gneissic basement of the Rio das Velhas greenstone belt in the central portion of the Quadrilátero Ferrífero (QF). The interest in a petrogenetic study of the ultramafic rocks is the partial preservation of igneous minerals, which are not observed in most of the completely metamorphosed ultramafic rocks in the QF. Among them, the steatites and the serpentinites are the best studied because of their economic importance. The ultramafic rocks from Amarantina are classified as metaperidotites due to the equigranular texture characteristic of plutonic origin. The rocks are made up of large grains of olivine, pyroxene, and spinel preserved from de original magmatic rock, which are distributed in a fine grained mass with talc, serpentine, chlorite, amphibole, and opaque minerals. Scarce arite (NiSbAs) and breithauptite (NiSb) were generated after pentlandite during hydrothermal metamorphism. Comparison of the chemical composition with a metakomatiite with spinifex texture from de QF as well as with known komatiitic rocks from other parts of the world reveals that the metaperidotites are chemically similar to non Al-depleted komatiites. Therefore it is probable that the studied ultramafic rocks correspond to the plutonic portion of the komatiitic magmatism of the Nova Lima group, at the base of the Rio das Velhas greenstone belt.