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The Sudbury Igneous Complex: Viscous emulsion differentiation of a
superheated impact melt sheet
Michael J. Zieg†
Bruce D. Marsh‡
M.K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA
ABSTRACT
The Sudbury Igneous Complex of Ontario,
Canada, is the remnant of a voluminous melt
sheet produced in a few minutes by impact
of a massive meteorite into continental crust
1.85 Ga ago. The transient cavity and melting
zone reached the Moho and instantly (~2 min)
relaxed to form a more familiar large, shallow
crater holding a thick, superheated (~1700 °C)
melt sheet covered by ~2 km of breccia. There
is little about the resulting bimodal igne-
ous complex that resembles crystallization
of well-known sheet-like bodies of similar
composition. Yet, the norite and granophyre
exhibit a remarkable similarity in isotopic
and trace element compositions, suggesting
an intimate common parentage from the
surrounding crust. This petrogenetic enigma
is explained here as a natural, unavoidable
consequence of the impact process in the
rapid formation of a superheated magmatic
emulsion, which we take as the high-tempera-
ture equivalent of breccia. A wide spectrum
of viscously discrete, interdispersed parcels
of mafic and felsic liquids, reflecting the com-
positional heterogeneity of the target crustal
materials, formed the emulsion. Within days
to months, the emulsion components sepa-
rated according to their relative densities into
a bimodal norite-granophyre assemblage that
formed the basic structure of the present
Sudbury Igneous Complex. There is clear
evidence of this emulsion in the earliest dikes
(i.e., offsets), which likely give the earliest
state of the nascent melt sheet. Immediately
following emulsion separation, the strongly
superheated bimodal melt sheet underwent
vigorous thermal convection in each layer.
These convective motions homogenized and
rapidly cooled the magma to the liquidus
†
Present address: Department of Geography, Ge-
ology, and the Environment, Slippery Rock Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania
16057, USA.
‡
Corresponding author e-mail: bmarsh@jhu.edu.
GSA Bulletin; November/December 2005; v. 117; no. 11/12; p. 1427–1450; doi: 10.1130/B25579.1; 14 figures; 1 table.
temperatures, whereupon convection ceased.
The pattern of convection was pinned in place
by the embayment topography of the crater
floor, which in turn played a pivotal role in
directing sulfide deposition into the embay-
ments. All further cooling was by conduction
of heat through the upper and lower bound-
aries during which time solidification fronts
were established and propagated inward
from the upper and lower margins. There is
clear evidence of solidification from the floor
upward and the roof downward. Minimal dif-
ferentiation and compositional modification
took place throughout cooling and solidifica-
tion. Nevertheless, during the solidification
stage, granitic rock fragments on the crater
floor and rafts of fallback breccia from the
thick overlying Onaping Formation became
unstable and entered the melt sheet, and
the partially melted remnants collected at
the interface between the norite and grano-
phyre. Some interstitial melt from the norite
also percolated upward, and, altogether, the
blocks and melt produced the distinctive
chemical and physical characteristics of the
unusual Transition Zone.
The Sudbury melt sheet is, in essence, a full-
scale magmatic experiment. The conditions of
formation, relative to any other large terres-
trial magma, are “precisely” known. Thus the
clear lack of any significant modal layering,
the overall homogeneous nature of each unit,
and the lack of any significant chemical dif-
ferentiation through crystal fractionation
establish Sudbury as a valuable example of
what does not happen under the initial condi-
tions long assumed to prevail at the formation
of most large magma chambers.
Keywords: magma, viscous emulsion, Sud-
bury, melt sheet, impact melt, differentiation.
INTRODUCTION
The Sudbury Igneous Complex of Ontario,
Canada, is a magmatic sheet that was generated
For permission to copy, contact editing@geosociety.org
© 2005 Geological Society of America
in a matter of minutes during impact of a mas-
sive (~12 km) meteorite into heterogeneous
continental crust, producing roughly 30,000 km3
of superheated magma and voluminous breccia.
The resulting igneous sheet is compositionally
bimodal, consisting of a layer of norite (~56%
SiO2) overlain by a layer of granophyre (~70%
SiO2), separated by a thin Transition Zone con-
sisting of quartz gabbro. Despite striking geo-
chemical and mineralogical differences between
the norite and granophyre, each unit is broadly
homogeneous over stratigraphic distances of
several hundreds of meters, and their isotopic
and trace element compositions indicate that
they have an intimate association.
Two thick, relatively homogeneous layers,
calamitously generated from heterogeneous
continental crust and enveloped by voluminous
heterogeneous breccias, imply a distinct mag-
matic process for generating compositional and
stratigraphic order from chaos. This process,
which we refer to as viscous emulsion differen-
tiation, involves the rapid gravitational separa-
tion of a grossly homogeneous mechanical mix-
ture of discrete heterogeneous magma parcels
prior to crystallization. This process operates
strictly in the liquid state and produces layering
unrelated to crystal fractionation. Rather, the
bimodal nature of the Sudbury Igneous Com-
plex is a reflection of the roughly bimodal char-
acter of the original continental crust in the Sud-
bury region at the time of impact. Through this
process, which is capable of producing strong
compositional order, massive impacts may have
been instrumental in creating the fundamental
structure of Earth’s early continental crust.
The Sudbury Igneous Enigma
In part because of the rich and enormous
volume of Ni-Cu sulfide ores (>1.5 billion
metric tons) near its base, the Sudbury Igneous
Complex (Fig. 1) has long fascinated petrolo-
gists. Yet certain unusual systematic field rela-
tions thwarted conventional explanations. N.L.
Bowen (1915, p. 49), e.g., noted the similarities
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ZIEG and MARSH

between the Sudbury Igneous Complex and
smaller diabase sills where small amounts of
granophyric material commonly occur near
the roof: “The great sheet-like mass at Sudbury
with granite in the upper part and norite in the
lower shows the same type [i.e., crystal settling]
of crystallization differentiation controlled by
gravity.” In this classical model of the crystal-
lization of a sill, the norite is interpreted as an
accumulation of settled plagioclase and ortho-
pyroxene produced during the crystallization
of a single homogeneous magma body (see
also Naldrett et al., 1970). But the unusually
large amount of silicic relative to mafic rock,
the complete lack of conspicuous upper and
lower compositionally similar chilled margins,
the absence of any conspicuous modal layer-
ing anywhere, the absence of strong systematic
chemical gradients within either unit, a thick
sandwich zone of unusual mafic material, the
monotonously uniform noritic textures over
distances of ~1 km, the complete absence of
granitic textures in a massive granitic intrusion,
and a remarkable lateral spatial stratigraphic
continuity have always been problematical. For
sill-like crystallization of a sheet of magma hav-
ing an initial composition of the bulk Sudbury
Igneous Complex (i.e., ~64 wt% SiO2), for
example, at the very least there should be upper
and lower chilled margins of this composition
grading inward (perhaps) to more siliceous
compositions (e.g., Marsh, 1996).
In considering the differentiation of large
magmatic bodies, H.H. Hess (1960, p. 173)
noted, “The mafic portion of this intrusive
shows surprisingly little differentiation in spite
of its size and hence long time available for
differentiation. . . . Apparently no crystal sort-
ing has occurred.” Wager and Brown (1968, p.
522) also puzzled over the general uniformity
of the Sudbury Igneous Complex in their global
survey of large layered intrusions: “The general
impression gained from the descriptions of the
norite intrusion and examination of the rock
types is that it is a relatively uniform norite
with little conspicuous layering.” Although they
did not believe that the norite and granophyre
were produced by differentiation of a single
parental magma, they concluded that if cryptic
variations in mineral compositions were found
in the norite, it might be evidence of fractional
crystallization processes. Some cryptic variation
is found in plagioclase and orthopyroxene com-
positions (Hewins, 1971; Naldrett and Hewins,
1984), but these variations are much smaller and
much less distinctive than would be expected for
progressive fractional crystallization of a thick,
initially homogeneous layer of magma.
An obvious way around many of these prob-
lems is to assume emplacement of two separate
magmas, one noritic and the other granitic, that
crystallized separately (Phemister, 1926, 1937).
This is a more complex physical scenario,
requiring the nearly contemporaneous indepen-
dent generation of large felsic and mafic magma
bodies in close proximity to one another, but it
avoids the difficult task of explaining the volu-
metric dominance of evolved melt (granophyre)
over mafic cumulates (norite) and the lack of
significant geochemical gradients within the
norite and granophyre, which would be expected
if the Sudbury Igneous Complex evolved by
fractional crystallization (Chai and Eckstrand,
1994). Nevertheless, this presents other difficult
problems. There is a remarkable similarity in
trace elements and isotopes in the two main
igneous units that is much too close to ascribe to
pure chance. For example, although individual
abundances vary, the values of La/Sm, Gd/Yb,
and Th/Nb are almost identical in the grano-
phyre and norite (Lightfoot et al., 1997c), and

Figure 1. Geology of the Sudbury Structure. Simplified geological map and stratigraphic column, showing distribution of lithological units
within the Sudbury Structure. Adapted from Naldrett and Kullerud (1967); Stöffler et al. (1994); Dressler et al. (1996). The various limbs
or margins of the present basin are generally referred to as North, South, and East Ranges. SIC—Sudbury Igneous Complex.

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SUDBURY SUPERHEATED IMPACT MELT SHEET

initial 87Sr/86Sr signatures are uniform across the sector variations in Sudbury Igneous Complex and a velocity of ~25 km/s. An impactor of this
Sudbury Igneous Complex (Dickin et al., 1999). composition, are the result of physical processes magnitude produced a transient crater with a
This would seem to require simultaneous gen- that occurred after the formation of an initially diameter of ~100 km and a depth of 30 km.
eration of two separate magmatic layers through bimodal melt sheet. This unusual initial condi- Within 2 or 3 min of impact, the transient crater
a single magmatic process. tion set the basic framework for the evolution collapsed to form a large shallow crater ~200 km
With the overwhelming evidence of a mas- of the complex. in diameter (Grieve, 1994; Fig. 2). Although
sive impact having created the Sudbury Struc- To appreciate the distinctiveness of the field local structural adjustments on variable length
ture came the realization that this complex must relations, the incredibly rapid time scales asso- scales continued for millions of years, the major
represent the impact melt sheet, which had to ciated with an impact event of this magnitude, structure, which contains the ~2.5 km thick pla-
have come mainly from melting of crustal target and the obstacles involved in gauging the ear- nar sheet of impact melt, formed in a time scale
rocks. Evidence for this comes from εNd and liest magma dynamics of the melt sheet, it is on the order of 5 min. All of the main structural
εSr values (at 1.85 Ga) that match those of the essential to have a basic understanding of the relations, the basic initial magmatic conditions
basement rocks (Deutsch, 1994), initial osmium impact event itself. Here, we draw heavily on (e.g., temperature, composition, and geometry),
isotopic ratios for the ores that are in the range the impact cratering dynamics of Melosh (1989) and the overall style of the setting thus were
of local crustal rocks (Dickin et al., 1999), and and on descriptions of the Sudbury event in established geologically in an instant. This can-
rare earth element patterns for the complex that Grieve (1994) and Stöffler et al. (1994). A valu- not be emphasized too strongly.
match those of the average Canadian Shield able overview of impact processes and shock Even allowing for uncertainty in the thick-
(e.g., Grieve, 1994). There has been continual metamorphism is given by French (1998). ness and diameter of the melt sheet and the
debate, however, over whether the entire com- exact geometry of the crater itself (e.g., multi-
plex is impact melt (e.g., Therriault et al., 2002) THE SUDBURY IMPACT EVENT ring, central uplift, etc.), the melt sheet aspect
or whether the granophyre alone is impact melt ratio was from the start on the order of 50:1 (i.e.,
and the norite is mantle-derived basaltic melt The Sudbury impact structure was formed the approximate aspect ratio of a compact disc).
contaminated with crustal material (e.g., Nal- 1850 Ma (Krogh et al., 1984) as a result of the The melt sheet is thus more like a very thick sill
drett, 1999). One of the major difficulties with impact of a meteorite with a diameter of ~12 km than the commonly depicted bowl or funnel-
accepting the entire complex as impact melt,
however, is the sharp geochemical contrast
between the granophyre and the norite (e.g.,
Chai and Eckstrand, 1993). Impact Event
In the model developed here, the unique geo-
chemistry, mineralogy, textures, and volumes
of norite and granophyre arise as the natural
result of the generation of a voluminous melt
sheet by massive impact. The association of
norite and granophyre in the Sudbury Igneous
Complex reflects the broadly bimodal nature of
the local continental crust rather than extremely
efficient and unusual igneous fractionation pro-
cesses. Wholesale melting of target rocks during
impact generated a superheated melt sheet of a
bulk chemical composition roughly identical to Aftermath
that of the local crust, but in a physical state of
interdispersed viscous parcels of mafic and fel-
sic melt (i.e., a viscous emulsion). The viscous
emulsion can be envisioned as the high-tem-
perature equivalent of breccia. The rapidity and
size of the cratering event prevented the melt
sheet from homogenizing into a single uniform
magma, leaving the two primary components
(mafic and felsic liquids) to separate into a
bimodal melt sheet. The melt sheet thus was
compositionally stratified well before crystal-
lization began, and yet the two units also show
common chemical traits that were developed
during the emulsion stage. Apparent geochemi-
cal fractionation trends are primarily those that Figure 2. Schematic history of the Sudbury impact process (after Stöffler et al., 1994).
existed prior to the impact, which are found (A) Scale of the Sudbury impact event. Impact of ~10–15-km-diameter meteorite produced
among all groups of contiguous continental transient crater ~100 km in diameter by ~30 km deep and generated ~1–3 × 104 km3 of melt.
rocks regardless of exact parentage. Distinctive Notice that the melting aureole is wide and transects the entire continental crust. (B) Final
secondary features, such as the mafic sublayer, geometry of Sudbury Structure. Melt sheet is a thin and wide sheet rather than a bowl. Ver-
the quartz gabbro in the Transition Zone, and tical exaggeration to show detail.

Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005 1429

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like feature. Moreover, because the boundaries
between the igneous units of the Sudbury Igne-
ous Complex generally parallel the footwall,
or lower contact, the present melt sheet is a
fragment of an original intrabasin area of the
original crater. If the walls, or lateral limits, of
the complex were exposed, the quartz gabbro
and granophyre would be observed to come into
contact with the country rocks.
Temperatures during the impact event reached
~4000 °C, vaporizing the meteorite and adjacent
silicate crust. Peak pressures in the shock wave
at the point of contact were >500 GPa (5 Mbar),
equivalent to the pressure at the center of Earth.
Outward from the impact point, temperature
and pressure decreased strongly with distance.
Surrounding the vaporization core, a thick melt-
ing front existed, and beyond that a brecciation
or fragmentation front. The divisions between
each front (vapor, melt, and solid) were indis-
tinct. The expanding shock front created an
intense radial flow of fragments and melt, which
preserved a basic stratigraphic order during the
cratering process. That is, fragments created at
the brecciation front, which formed the leading
edge of the developing crater, moved outward
and upward along the bowl walls of the transient
crater. The melting zone, bounded by breccia
and silicate vapor, followed the fragmentation
front. The stratigraphic order in the burrowing
process existed not only vertically in the phases
of vapor, melt, and breccia (i.e., solid), but also
roughly laterally in each front. The deepest part
of the melt envelope came from deepest in the
crust, and the melt highest on the transient crater
wall came, on average, from higher in the crust.
Volumetrically, the greatest breccia and melt
production thus occurred in the upper part of
the crust (Fig. 2). The average temperature of
the melt zone, and for the initial temperature
of the resulting melt sheet, was at least 2000
°C (Grieve et al., 1977), which is sufficient to
completely melt all rock types, and undoubt-
edly some parts of the silicate melt would have
undergone boiling. The intensity of the impact,
the volume of melt, the melt sheet temperature,
and all other measures of the impact scale
strongly upward with the size of the impactor,
and the Sudbury event would have produced a
significantly greater volume of melt than other
recognized impact structures.
Melt production occurred during excavation
of the transient crater, which then rebounded to
form the final shallow crater in a time similar
to the excavation event (i.e., minutes). The
rebounding crust was torn by a series of radial
and concentric faults about the crater, reflect-
ing the pattern of strength and structure of the
local crust. This disruption event suctioned melt
and breccia into the open fractures to form an
1430 Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005
ZIEG and MARSH
unusual series of features called offset dikes.
The strongly superheated (~2000 °C) and dehy-
drated impact melt now filled a shallow crater
and associated fractures in the country rock.
This melt sheet was unevenly floored by breccia
that was not excavated during crater formation
and was roofed with breccia cascading in from
the crater rim and falling from the atmosphere.
Because of the very short time scales involved
in the cratering event and in producing the melt
sheet, the field relations are extremely complex.
The melt sheet formed by in situ flash melting
of a large, highly fragmented cross section of
the local continental crust. Final solidification
of the melt sheet, as is considered later, required
some 100 k.y. In the intervening time, many
significant readjustments occurred. But in gen-
eral, the entire structure consists of two highly
contrasting components: heterogeneous solid
breccia and a relatively homogeneous impact
melt sheet.
GEOLOGY
Regional Setting and Target Rocks of the
Sudbury Igneous Complex
The Sudbury Structure lies at the intersection
of two tectonic provinces, the Archean Superior
province to the north and the Proterozoic South-
ern province to the south. The rocks of the Supe-
rior province are primarily granites and granitic
gneisses together with greenstone sequences
of the Abitibi Group and Matachewan diabase
dikes. Along the northwest contact of the Sud-
bury Igneous Complex is the Levack Gneiss,
which is interpreted by Dressler (1984a) as a
highly metamorphosed supracrustal sequence of
mafic to felsic volcanics. The rocks in the South-
ern province are dominantly metasediments
and metavolcanics belonging to the Huronian
Supergroup (Bennett et al., 1991). This group
overlies the Archean bedrock nonconformably,
thickening to the southeast (Fralick and Miall,
1989). The Huronian sequence is cut by dikes
and sills of the Nipissing diabase (Lightfoot
and Naldrett, 1996) and by the Creighton and
Murray granitic plutons. Along the boundary
between the Superior and Southern provinces
are a series of layered mafic intrusions of the
Bull Lake series (Vogel et al., 1998; James et al.,
2002). Dressler (1984a) gives a more detailed
discussion of the regional geological setting of
the Sudbury Structure.
Sudbury Structure
The geology of the Sudbury Structure is sum-
marized in Figure 1. It consists of (1) shocked
and brecciated country rocks, (2) the Sudbury
Igneous Complex, (3) the Onaping Formation,
and (4) the Onwatin and Chelmsford Forma-
tions. A brief introduction to the geology of each
of these units is included here; for more detailed
descriptions, see Pye et al. (1984) and Stöffler et
al. (1994) and abundant references therein.
Shocked and Brecciated Country Rocks
Shock metamorphic features such as shatter
cones (Dietz, 1964; Dietz and Butler, 1964;
Guy-Bray et al., 1966) and planar deformation
features in quartz grains (French, 1967, 1968)
can be found in the basement rocks around the
Sudbury Structure. Two distinctive types of
brecciation are also recognized in the country
rocks. The first, known as Sudbury Breccia, is a
pseudotachylite containing locally derived rock
fragments (e.g., Dressler, 1984b; Thompson and
Spray, 1994, 1996) and occurs in dikes, pods,
and lenses. The second, referred to as Footwall
Breccia, generally forms thicker bodies and lies
along the lower contact of the Sudbury Igneous
Complex. It contains locally derived igneous
and metamorphic clasts in a matrix that grades
from igneous (partially melted) to metamorphic
(recrystallized) with increasing distance from
the contact with the complex (Lakomy, 1990).
Sudbury Igneous Complex (Impact Melt)
As has been mentioned, the Sudbury Igne-
ous Complex is divided into two primary units,
norite and granophyre. A relatively thin but con-
tinuous layer of quartz gabbro separates these
two units. Quartz diorite is commonly found in
radial or concentric offset dikes (Grant and Bite,
1984; Tuscherer and Spray, 2002; Murphy and
Spray, 2002; Lightfoot and Farrow, 2002), and a
discontinuous basal unit known as the Sublayer
contains an assortment of local and exotic mafic
to ultramafic xenoliths (Pattison, 1979; Light-
foot et al., 1997a, 1997b, 2001). The chemical
composition of these units is summarized in
Table 1. The petrography and mineralogy of
these units are described in detail by, among
others, Naldrett and Kullerud (1967), Lightfoot
et al. (2001), and Therriault et al. (2002).
Onaping Formation
This thick (~1.5 km) formation contains
abundant fragmental debris that was depos-
ited on top of the melt sheet after having been
ejected into the atmosphere during the cratering
process. The Onaping contains abundant large
fragments of quartz arenite and other sedimen-
tary lithologies from the Huronian Supergroup,
and also fragments from the other country rocks
surrounding the Sudbury Igneous Complex
(Peredery, 1972; Muir and Peredery, 1984;
Ames et al., 2002). At its base, the Onaping
is very coarse and clast supported, and has an
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SUDBURY SUPERHEATED IMPACT MELT SHEET

TABLE 1. CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF THE SUDBURY IGNEOUS COMPLEX from terranes outside the Sudbury Structure
Oxide Felsic norite Transition zone Granophyre Quartz diorite †
Vitric Onaping ‡
Bulk SIC § (Cantin and Walker, 1972; Rousell, 1972).
SiO2 57.48 (1.16) 56.20 (2.92) 69.03 (2.24) 60.0 61.56 (0.78) 64.57
TiO2 0.51 (0.11) 1.58 (0.84) 0.81 (0.16) 0.89 0.61 (0.03) 0.81
CHEMICAL AND DENSITY PROFILES
Al2O3 16.61 (0.72) 14.55 (1.32) 12.69 (0.41) 15.5 13.59 (0.48) 13.79 OF THE SUDBURY IGNEOUS
Fe2O3 7.13 (0.57) 11.03 (2.54) 6.19 (1.06) 11.6 8.40 (0.80) 7.27 COMPLEX
MnO 0.12 (0.01) 0.14 (0.02) 0.09 (0.02) 0.13 0.17 (0.07) 0.08
MgO 4.98 (0.80) 3.46 (0.91) 0.82 (0.48) 4.3 4.28 (0.43) 2.85 In the field, the norite and granophyre are
CaO 7.02 (0.77) 6.84 (1.83) 1.79 (0.54) 6.1 2.63 (0.83) 4.03
marked by a monotonous spatial uniformity in
Na2O 3.02 (0.23) 3.29 (0.70) 3.79 (0.61) 2.7 4.19 (0.79) 3.20
K2O 1.48 (0.34) 1.74 (0.51) 3.52 (0.86) 1.9 2.66 (1.16) 2.91
texture and color, an impression largely verified
P2O5 0.11 (0.03) 0.48 (0.48) 0.15 (0.05) 0.14 0.15 (0.01) 0.16 in compositional and density profiles.
†
A section through the norite, the Transition
Average composition, Worthington Offset, marginal zone; Lightfoot et al. (2001).
‡
Average composition, least altered vitric; Ames et al. (2002). Zone, and lowermost granophyre was obtained
§
Calculated bulk SIC (Sudbury Igneous Complex); Therriault et al. (2002). from drill core samples supplied by Falcon-
bridge Exploration. This profile was extended
to include the entire thickness of the granophyre
by collecting samples along a surface profile
igneous matrix. It grades up through suevitic, or most mafic toward the top. Large kilometer-size, that follows Highway 144 from near the drill
melt-bearing, breccias to reworked breccias that nearly monomict clast domains are found within site to the Onaping Formation. The locations of
contain a few large clasts. Ames et al. (2002) the lower Onaping (Ames et al., 2002). the surface samples, together with the site of the
recognized throughout the Onaping the pres- drill hole, are shown in Figure 3. These two pro-
ence of vitric bombs, blocks, and intraforma- Onwatin and Chelmsford Formations files were combined to produce a single section
tional dikes of remarkably uniform composition The uppermost Onaping Formation grades normal to the dip of the entire complex (~30°
(~62 wt% SiO2). There also may be a rough, into a series of mudstones and graywackes, the to the south in this area; Milkereit et al., 1992).
inverted crustal compositional stratigraphy, with Onwatin and Chelmsford Formations, respec- This is the same method employed by Light-
the most silicic material on the bottom and the tively. These sediments were apparently derived foot et al. (1997b) for a drill hole and surface
profile in the East Range (see Fig. 4 caption).
The granophyre and the quartz gabbro appear to
have undergone significant hydrothermal altera-
tion, which is reflected in the scatter of some
elements, e.g., K2O, Na2O, and Rb.
The geochemical structure of the Sudbury
Igneous Complex, shown in Figure 4, is dis-
tinct from other large igneous bodies. It lacks
the rhythmic layering seen in intrusions such
as Skaergaard, Bushveld, and Stillwater. The
compositions within both the granophyre and
norite remain essentially uniform over strati-
graphic distances of several hundred meters
(see also Lightfoot et al., 2001). Also, the
quartz gabbro is anomalous in its mafic nature
in the center of the body.
Although MgO in the norite decreases
upward with approach to the Transition Zone,
other components (e.g., SiO2, TiO2, Na2O, P2O5,
Zr) that might be considered incompatible
show little variation. In the granophyre, MgO
increases near the top along with a decrease in
silica and Zr. This marks the location of the so-
called plagioclase-rich granophyre (Peredery,
1972), which is a distinctly more mafic phase
of the granophyre unit just beneath the Onaping
Formation. It is notable that values of Ce/Yb
and Th/Nb, however, do not change signifi-
cantly through the entire sequence (Lightfoot et
al., 2001).
Figure 3. North Range location map. Large diamond indicates approximate location of drill Most major oxides and trace elements,
core samples, and small circles show locations of surface samples taken from road cuts along including rare earth elements, vary smoothly
Highway 144 and the nearby road leading to Windy Lake. Surface sample identifications through the Transition Zone; CaO and Eu are
are all of the series DOW-xx. more irregular. However, TiO2, Fe2O3, and P2O5

Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005 1431

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ZIEG and MARSH

all have distinct maximum concentrations in the A

Transition Zone, whereas SiO2 has a minimum
concentration there.
Like their chemical composition, the density
of the rocks in the Sudbury Igneous Complex is
also remarkably uniform through both the norite
and granophyre (Fig. 5). Except for an increase
toward the base of the norite (corresponding
to mafic norite and sublayer norite, Hewins,
1971), and a smaller zone of increased density
at the top of the granophyre (corresponding to
the plagioclase-rich granophyre), there is rela-
tively little variation in the density of either the
granophyre or the norite over several hundred
meters of section. However, as with the abun-
dances of Fe2O3, P2O5, and TiO2, the density has
a pronounced maximum in the Transition Zone.
The chemical and density peaks are slightly
offset, with the density maximum occurring at
441 m, the Fe2O3 maximum at 430 m, the P2O5
maximum at 396 m, and the TiO2 maximum
at 370 m. The significance of these offsets is
unclear. Moreover, there is a remarkable simi-
larity in the detailed density variations within
the Transition Zone across the basin. Profiles
from six drill holes in two areas on the north-
east and northwest are closely similar when,
to cancel the effect of uncertainty in absolute
stratigraphic height, normalized to one another
by the maximum density in each profile. These
strong matching gradients suggest that this
stratification is not accidental and came about
when the magma was highly fluid and easily
able to achieve hydrostatic equilibrium laterally
for long distances, probably across the entire
melt sheet. This condition was also facilitated
by the Transition Zone’s location at the exact
thermal center of the melt sheet. That is, this
is where the solidification fronts, propagating
inward from above and below, met. Thus, this
was the last part of the body to solidify (more
details on this later).

GRANITIC INCLUSIONS: TRACERS OF
DYNAMICS
Rock debris within the Sudbury Igneous
Complex is valuable as a tracer of magmatic
processes that operated in the early history of
the melt sheet. Although granitic inclusions have
been reported in both the South Range (Steven-
son and Colgrove, 1968) and the North Range
(Muir, 1983), unusually large blocks are more
common in the South Range (Fig. 6), particu-
larly in the vicinity of the Murray pluton (Fig. 6,
area A). These large blocks have been interpreted
as xenoliths from the Murray and Creighton plu-
tons (Dressler, 1984a; Stevenson, 1984).
This material is primarily concentrated in
the Transition Zone, but it is also found in the
Figure 4. Chemostratigraphy of Sudbury Igneous Complex. Profiles of (A) major oxide
(wt%), and (B) trace element abundances (ppm) as a function of approximate stratigraphic
position within the Sudbury Igneous Complex. Negative values indicate drill core depth;
positive values are horizontal distances from quartz gabbro–granophyre contact, normal to
strike. All distances are projected to stratigraphic position by assuming that the Sudbury
Igneous Complex is locally dipping at 30° toward the center of the Sudbury Basin. The top
of the drill core is defined as the zero position. (Continued on following page.)
norite and lowermost granophyre. Individual In addition to a strong physical resemblance,
inclusions range in size from a few centimeters the granite inclusions share a close chemical
to ~100 m, but most are on the order of 1 m. affinity with the South Range granites. This is
Generally, larger blocks are higher in the sec- most apparent in the rare earth element com-
tion, but inclusions up to a few meters in size are positions of these rocks (Fig. 7). The rare earth
also found at the base of the norite. These rocks element abundances in the granite blocks from
are uniformly fine grained and pink to tan. the South Range are strikingly similar to those

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SUDBURY SUPERHEATED IMPACT MELT SHEET

B in the nearby Murray and Creighton granites.

The blocks are compositionally distinct from
the North Range granites, which are exemplified
in Figure 7 by the Cartier granite. This indicates
that the granitic blocks in the Sudbury Igneous
Complex are derived from the local footwall
environment and have not been transported long
horizontal distances from their source as a part
of the cratering process.
Physically, the granite blocks seem to have
been solid at the time they were incorporated
into the norite. Many individual pieces of
granite are fractured, preserving angular edges,
whereas others are bent or folded; few seem to
be spherical, as would be expected if they had
been completely molten. Nevertheless, the fine
to medium texture is finer grained than that of
the apparent source plutons, which may suggest
than these blocks were totally recrystallized at
high temperature, perhaps even in the melting
range. Although intrusion of some of the gra-
nitic bodies into the norite and gabbro as dikes
cannot be ruled out, it seems far more likely that
most of them rose into their current position as
discrete bodies. Thus, they should more prop-
erly be considered xenoliths. It is notable that
these specific blocks may have been slightly
denser than the fully molten norite, but slightly
less dense than norite with ~25% crystals, which
Figure 4 (continued). would not have greatly hindered rising. In a het-
erogeneous population of breccia on the floor,
therefore, different compositions (i.e., densities)
may have risen at different times; some blocks
may have followed the solidification front (also
a densification front) upward. And some blocks
were also produced in response to large thermal
stresses during cool-down and solidification
(see later remarks).

TRANSITION ZONE BRECCIA

In addition to granitic blocks, the Transi-

tion Zone in the central South Range contains
another exotic lithology, which may be a ves-
tige of another important magmatic process.
This rock type, informally referred to here as
the Transition Zone breccia, resembles a par-
tially molten breccia and contains rounded to
subangular “clasts” in an igneous matrix. The
2.6 2.8 3.0 abundance and appearance of the clasts vary
from site to site within the outcrop area, but
the matrix rock remains consistent and is eas-
ily distinguished from the surrounding quartz
Figure 5. Density profiles. Left panel: density of Sudbury Igneous Complex rocks as a func- gabbro. In areas where the clast structure is not
tion of approximate stratigraphic position. Positions are the same as in Figure 3. Right apparent, e.g., a commonly pervasive scatter of
panel: detailed density variations from six drill holes through the Transition Zone, shown large, ragged plagioclase crystals may represent
on an expanded vertical (distance) scale. These drill holes are from the full extent of the restitic debris from the melting of granitic clasts.
Sudbury Basin in the North Range. To avoid the problem of stratigraphic uncertainties, This breccia unit is in sharp contact with the
each profile has been normalized by placing the maximum density of each drill hole at the surrounding quartz gabbro. Because there is no
same stratigraphic position. chilling on either side, this juxtaposition must

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ZIEG and MARSH

have occurred while both were in the molten

state but were cool enough for diffusive equili-
bration to have been slow.
The Transition Zone breccia occupies a large
outcrop area within the Transition Zone (Fig. 6,
area B), but its full extent is uncertain. The
southern part of this body has been mapped in
detail; only reconnaissance mapping has been
attempted to the north. The overall form of the
Transition Zone breccia from this mapping is of a
downward sinking plume of breccia-laden mate-
rial spreading out in the Transition Zone. That is,
the Transition Zone breccia narrows upward from
a wide, flatter body into a thinner neck or stalk.
More extensive field mapping is necessary to
ascertain the total areal and vertical extent of this
unit and to search for possible additional similar
occurrences in the Transition Zone.
One of the intriguing questions about the
Transition Zone breccia is whether or not it is
related to the “rafts” of Onaping breccia found
in the upper parts of the granophyre (e.g., Fig. 6,
area C). This unusual rock type, clearly, may
be a large volume of foundered fallback brec-
cia that sank deep into the granophyre and was
Figure 6. Detailed map of Azilda area, showing unusually thick Transition Zone, included
partially melted by the heat of the surrounding
granitic blocks, Transition Zone breccia, and apparently foundered raft of Basal Onaping
magma. This is similar to the granitic blocks,
breccia.
with the important difference being that these
assemblages consist of blocks of assorted size
and composition, which makes partial melting
more efficient. Although the full stratigraphic
extent of the Transition Zone breccia is not
known, it definitely is floored in the Transi-
tion Zone and does not extend downward into
the norite. Instead, it lies primarily within the
Transition Zone and the overlying granophyre.
Despite the lack of an observed connection
between the Transition Zone breccia and the
Onaping breccias, the similar physical appear-
ances of these two units strongly suggest that
they are related.
In addition to the physical similarities, strong
chemical similarities are evident between the
Transition Zone breccia and the basal unit of
the Onaping Formation. In Figure 8, the chemi-
cal compositions of these two units are directly
compared on an AFM diagram, together with
other parts of the Onaping Formation and the
Sudbury Igneous Complex norite, gabbro, and
granophyre. The Transition Zone breccia has a
chemical composition that strongly resembles
the basal member of the Onaping Formation
and is distinct from the surrounding Sudbury
complex. This supports the hypothesis that
the Transition Zone breccia represents basal
Onaping breccia that foundered, sank through
the granophyre, and came to rest within the Figure 7. Chondrite-normalized rare earth element abundances in granitic blocks com-
denser Transition Zone and above the denser pared to footwall granites from the South Range (Creighton and Murray) and the North
norite. The granitic blocks or inclusions, on Range (Cartier). The granite blocks (gray-shaded region) are similar to the nearby South
the other hand, came from the crater floor and Range plutons and are distinct from the distant North Range pluton.

1434 Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005

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Figure 8. Ternary diagram showing the compositions of the Transition Zone breccia, differ-
ent members of the Onaping Formation, and the Sudbury Igneous Complex. The Transition
Zone breccia is similar to the Basal Member of the Onaping and distinct from the Sudbury
Igneous Complex.
rose through the norite into the Transition Zone
but were stopped by the less dense overlying
granophyre. The Transition Zone, in addition to
being a chemical-mechanical boundary, is thus
interpreted to be a collection zone for xenolithic
material from above and below.
Further insight into the nature of the Transi-
tion Zone can be gained from broadly similar,
though much smaller, units of this general
nature occurring in diabase sills.
Comparison of the Sudbury Igneous
Complex to Composite Diabase-
Granophyre Sills
Although the Sudbury Igneous Complex dif-
fers from similar sized layered mafic intrusions,
it shares many geochemical features with much
smaller composite diabase-granophyre sills.
The association is commonly of a thin layer
of quartz gabbro or quartz diabase with high
concentrations of TiO2, FeOT, and P2O5 at or
near the interface, separating layers of overlying
felsic rock from underlying basaltic rock. In the
Sierra Ancha sill, for example, a thin interfacial
layer of quartz diabase is found between grano-
phyre and olivine diabase and is interpreted as
contamination of the diabase (Smith and Silver,
1975). The granophyre is in direct contact with
overlying sedimentary roof rocks without an
intervening septum of diabase as is commonly
found in similar situations (see later comments),
and is interpreted as the product of melting in
the contact zone and thus as not a product of
differentiation processes within the sill. Relative
to the rest of the sill, the Sierra Ancha diabase
directly adjacent to the granophyre is enriched
Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005
SUDBURY SUPERHEATED IMPACT MELT SHEET
in TiO2, FeO, and P2O5. The trends in the other
major oxides (see Smith and Silver, 1975, their
Fig. 10) are similar to those seen in the Sudbury
Igneous Complex (Fig. 4A).
In fact, a surprising number of basaltic sills
contain large, isolated bulbous masses of grano-
phyre near the upper contact. The Culpeper
Basin granophyres (Froelich and Gottfried,
1988), the granophyres of the Gettysburg region
of Pennsylvania (Grossenbacher, 1994), the
Tasmanian granophyres of the Red Hill dolerite
(McDougall, 1962), and the Great Lake doler-
ite sheet (McDougall, 1964) are all similar in
form and petrology. These granophyres occupy
high points in the roof of the host sills, always
separated from the roof rock by a thin (~10 m)
band of dolerite. In the cases studied so far, the
granophyres are in isotopic equilibrium with the
basaltic sill or host rock, and the host rock is
essentially free of other systematic granophyric
segregations.
A scenario for the formation of these masses
was given by Marsh (1996; see also Grossen-
bacher, 1994). Discrete blobs of granophyric
material are commonly produced in mafic sills
(e.g., Marsh, 2002) and are commonly found
in basaltic dikes (e.g., Vogel and Wilband,
1978). If this material is initially present (e.g.,
Marsh, 2002) in the intruding basaltic magma,
it will rise to the head of an ascending column
of magma, owing to a low relative density, and
upon emplacement, collect as an ensemble
of blobs against the roof near the entry point.
Roofward compaction is extremely efficient
and evicts or drains the intervening basaltic
host melt in a matter of days to weeks to form
a single layer of granophyric melt that can flow
uphill along the roof to collect at a high point
(Grossenbacher, 1994). The great buoyancy of
these masses commonly deforms the roof rock
further. The ubiquitous, thin margin of host
diabase along the upper contact gives a measure
of the time after emplacement for positioning of
the granophyre, and calculations of compaction
rate and along-roof flow rate show the overall
process to be remarkably rapid (Grossenbacher,
1994). At and just below the lower contacts of
these granophyric masses, they also exhibit
characteristic high concentrations and unusual
stratigraphic variations in TiO2, FeOT, and P2O5.
The connection to the Sudbury Igneous Com-
plex of these granophyric masses in diabase
sills may be closer than expected. The process
of amassing the granophyres, as previously
described, is very much an emulsion separation
process (see details later) in which, in contrast
to the Sudbury complex, the continuous or volu-
metrically dominant phase is basaltic magma,
and the dispersed phase is felsic magma. The
mechanics of the process are the same. The
important recognition is that the high concen-
trations of TiO2, FeO, and P2O5 arise from the
mechanical or physical juxtaposition of two
magmas with contrasting compositions, which
have evidently attempted to reach chemical
equilibrium through subsequent diffusional
processes. Diffusional processes similar to this
have been observed experimentally in more
refined silicate melts (Liang et al., 1996; Kress
and Ghiorso, 1993; Richter et al., 2003).
EMULSION DIFFERENTIATION
Overview
It is essential to have a fairly detailed overall
understanding of our general model of how the
Sudbury Igneous Complex evolved so that the
later detailed arguments concerning magma
dynamics can be appreciated in relation to the
cratering mechanics and subsequent field rela-
tions. Quantitative treatments follow.
During the impact event, intense fragmenta-
tion of the target rocks produced breccias with
fragments ranging from microns to hundreds
of meters in size (Peredery, 1972; Muir and
Peredery, 1984; Ames et al., 2002). These brec-
cias are characteristic of all aspects of Sudbury
geology. Low-temperature brecciated material
is primarily found as massive ejecta deposits,
such as the Onaping Formation (e.g., Avermann,
1994) or as dike-like bodies of pseudotachylyte
(Sudbury Breccia), that pervade the country
rocks (e.g., Thompson and Spray, 1996). The
high-temperature equivalent of solid breccia,
we propose, is molten “breccia,” which formed
a heterogeneous mechanical mixture of igneous
1435
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droplets and blobs corresponding to the differ-
ent lithologies present in the target zone. We
call this assemblage a magmatic emulsion. The
emulsion existed because of the viscosity con-
trast, however small, between a wide spectrum
of felsic and mafic liquids and behaved simi-
larly to an emulsion composed of chemically
immiscible liquids (oil and water, for example).
For reference, at 1700 °C, granophyre melt is
10–15 times more viscous than norite melt, as
calculated by the thermodynamic modeling
software package MELTS (Ghiorso and Sack,
1995). It was this emulsified magma body that
formed the initial melt sheet, and the character-
istics of this magmatic emulsion played a key
role in determining the chemical and physical
destiny of the Sudbury Igneous Complex. We
emphasize that this emulsion magma is simply
the high-temperature equivalent of solid breccia
and is an unavoidable natural consequence of a
massive impact. Moreover, that the melt sheet
could have been this heterogeneous in the earli-
est stages of its existence is a direct consequence
of the incredibly short time (i.e., ~3 min) it took
to form the melt by impact.
Because of density contrasts between the
component liquids (i.e., basaltic and granitic
magmas), the initial viscous emulsion rapidly
separated into two distinct layers over a period
of months. The volumes of the two layers and
the bulk composition of the melt sheet thus were
controlled by the composition of the continen-
tal crust in the Sudbury region at the time of
impact. The crust was roughly bimodal, and a
total melt of the crust produced a melt sheet that
was also bimodal.
Unlike terrestrially generated magmas, the
entire melt sheet was initially highly super-
heated, with an estimated temperature of
at least 1700 °C (Grieve, 1994; Ivanov and
Deutsch, 1999; and see later comments), at
which all crystals and nuclei present in the melt
would have been destroyed. Once the emulsion
separated into two layers, the melt sheet initially
cooled by means of vigorous turbulent thermal
convection, which persisted for tens to hundreds
of years. This convection thoroughly mixed and
homogenized each layer, expelled all remaining
volatiles, and rapidly cooled the entire melt
sheet to its liquidus, whereupon convection
ceased and crystallization set in.
Further cooling of the melt sheet occurred
by conduction of heat through the boundaries
of the complex. Solidification fronts (regions
of space bounded by the liquidus and solidus
isotherms; see Marsh, 1996) formed at the
upper and lower margins. These propagated
progressively inward and met approximately at
the interface between the granophyre and norite.
Because of the unusually high temperatures of
1436 Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005
ZIEG and MARSH
the rocks at the upper and lower contacts, these
solidification fronts were unusually thick, hav-
ing maximum thicknesses nearly half that of the
melt sheet as a whole.
The Transition Zone between the norite and
granophyre layers consists of quartz gabbro and
contains abundant inclusions of local rock types.
This zone is a chemical and physical boundary
layer between the upper and lower layers and
is, perhaps by chance, at the meeting interface
between the upper and lower solidification
fronts. Because it contains the densest rock in
the body, the Transition Zone is gravitationally
unstable and must have formed late, after the
leading part of the lower solidification front
had reached this horizon. Only then was enough
physical support available to maintain the quartz
gabbro in position above the norite. The trains of
breccia material from above and granitic blocks
from below the Transition Zone record this pro-
cess of debris collection from above and below
that almost certainly persisted throughout the
magmatic stage. The evolution of the rocks in
the Transition Zone was also influenced by vola-
tiles, as evidenced by significant deuteric altera-
tion and miarolitic cavities in the quartz gabbro.
These volatiles were most likely derived from
dehydration of entrained granitic debris from
below and were a relatively late stage magmatic
rehydration event; this may also have helped to
stabilize the dense Transition Zone magma.
The basic structure of the Sudbury Igneous
Complex thus was established by a massive
extraterrestrial impact onto heterogeneous
continental crust; the detailed structure resulted
from the rapid separation of a silicate emulsion,
an ensuing vigorous convection of superheated
melt, and the interaction of solidification fronts
with debris from the roof and floor. In order for
this explanation to be plausible, the relevant
time and length scales that characterize the
various physical and chemical processes must
be shown to be reasonable with respect to the
field relations.
Emulsion Stage
At the end of the cratering process, the Sud-
bury melt sheet was, in effect, molten breccia
or an emulsion of mafic and felsic liquids.
Emulsions are characterized by discrete blobs
and blebs of one fluid dispersed (i.e., dispersed
phase) within a more voluminous continuous
fluid (i.e., continuous phase). The boundaries
between the two fluids or phases are usually
maintained by surface tension (e.g., large Weber
number), as in mixtures of oil and water. From
consideration of the large volume of granitic
melt relative to noritic melt, parcels of mafic
melt of a wide range of sizes and compositions
were dispersed within a continuous granitic
melt. And because of the gross similarity in
composition of the silicate fluids involved, and
the relatively large characteristic size of the
individual parcels of the dispersed (i.e., noritic
melt) phase (e.g., microseconds to millisec-
onds), there was no major effect from surface
tension (except possibly for the smallest mafic
blebs). The interfacial boundaries instead are
maintained by contrasts, however slight, in
viscosity and density, which themselves are also
interrelated. As in composite dikes (e.g., Yoder,
1973; Vogel and Wilband, 1978; Snyder et al.,
1997), the viscosity contrasts between the felsic
and mafic magma prevented rapid homogeniza-
tion of the melt sheet through shearing motions.
That is, although the Sudbury magmas were
chemically miscible, they mainly remained as
discrete phases. Chemical diffusion eventually
would have homogenized the emulsion into a
uniform sheet of magma, but before diffusion
could be effective over large (more than cen-
timeter-length) scales, the emulsion separated
in response to the density contrasts into a dense
basal mafic layer and a light felsic layer.
In the schematic view of a magmatic emul-
sion, shown as Figure 9, dense mafic blobs
(gray) are dispersed throughout the melt sheet,
remaining distinct from the surrounding felsic
magma because of size and viscosity contrast.
Before the emulsion could homogenize by dif-
fusion, the greater density of the mafic blobs
caused them to settle, compact, and coalesce
into a basal noritic layer, expelling and driving
upward interstitial felsic magma.
Before considering the dynamics of emul-
sions in more detail, it is useful to appreciate
some of the time scales involved in separating
an emulsion as thick as the Sudbury melt sheet
into two layers. Perhaps the most basic time
scale is that for a random mafic blob to settle
under optimum conditions through half the melt
sheet. The settling time for a spherical parcel
of mafic melt settling 1500 m in granitic melt
(granophyre at 1700 °C) of viscosity 300 poise
(30 Pa s, as calculated using MELTS) under
a density contrast of 0.14 g/cm3 is shown by
Figure 10A. As can be seen from Stokes’ law,
the time is inversely proportional to the square
of the parcel radius. (The exact viscosity and
density contrasts between the mafic parcel and
the granitic melt are essentially immaterial
[Marsh, 1982].) Under these conditions, all but
the smallest (i.e., <10 cm) mafic blobs will have
settled out of the emulsion within 104 s (~3 h).
This is an absolute minimum time, as granitic
material streaming upward and crowding from
other sinking blobs will reduce sinking rates.
The actual settling time, when hindered settling
is included (see later remarks), could be up to
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SUDBURY SUPERHEATED IMPACT MELT SHEET

Δρ

μ
Δρ

Figure 9. Schematic representation of magmatic emulsion. (A) Initial state. Dark-gray blobs
are parcels of mafic magma (norite); light-gray background is continuous felsic magma
phase (granophyre). (B) Intermediate state. Most of the denser mafic blobs have settled to
the base of the complex, forming a compacted, coalescing mafic layer. This layer contains
trapped septa of the continuous felsic phase, thus giving it the geochemical signature of a
highly contaminated mafic magma. Only very small mafic blobs are trapped in the grano-
phyre and assimilated before they can settle to the bottom of the complex, which means that
the granophyre is far less contaminated than the norite.

100 times greater, but this is still not a long time
(~2 weeks).
While the droplets are settling, they also
interact chemically with the surrounding
magma, which presents a separate time scale.
Assuming that the interaction is strictly dif-
fusional, and taking a characteristic diffusiv-
ity (D) of 10−7cm2/s (e.g., Richter et al., 2003;
Liang and Davis, 2002; Liang et al., 1996;
Kress and Ghiorso, 1993), the length of time (t)
required for a droplet to be fully contaminated
by the surrounding felsic liquid is directly pro-
portional to the radius (r) squared; i.e., t ~ r2/D
(see Fig. 10B).
The fate of droplets in the emulsion can be
gauged by comparing settling time to con-
tamination time as a function of droplet radius
(Fig. 10C). Any mafic droplets of a radius
>~1 cm would have settled to the base of the
melt sheet without experiencing significant
chemical contamination. Droplets <~6 mm in
radius would experience significant chemical
interaction with the surrounding felsic magma
before coalescing into the mafic layer. These
basic results imply that density separation of a
magmatic emulsion would be an extremely effi-
cient and rapid process in creating a stratified
igneous complex, especially if most of the initial
magma parcels are larger than a few centimeters
in diameter and if the dynamics of emulsion
separation is indeed rapid.
It is important to point out that there will also
be myriads of parcels of granitic melt moving
up and down in the continuous melt phase, and
μ
altogether this allows a large amount of intimate
chemical exchange such that each phase (mafic Δρ
and silicic) could easily achieve common isoto-
pic and trace element characteristics in spite of
their original crustal provenance. Also, the spec-
trum of particle sizes produced in the cratering
process is exceedingly large, and a significant
amount of the mass of the system resides at
relatively small parcel sizes, although there is
a strong cutoff in size at ~0.01 cm (Melosh,
1989, p. 90).
Dynamics of Viscous Emulsions Figure 10. Competing processes during
emulsion separation. (A) Characteristic
Large volume emulsions are vital to a great time scale of settling (ts) as a function of blob
many industrial processes, and there is a large radius (r) for a granitic layer of thickness H
body of literature on these systems. To hasten (1500 m). (B) Characteristic time scale of
transfer over long distances, e.g., an emulsion chemical diffusion (td) as a function of blob
of petroleum dispersed as droplets in water radius. (C) Ratio of the two time scales. If
is made, pumped, and then reseparated at the the diffusional time scale is much longer
destination. The basic mechanics of the pro- than the settling time scale, a blob of that
cess of emulsification and separation are well radius should escape from the emulsion
known (e.g., Hartland and Jeelani, 1994), and with very little chemical interaction. If the
what follows is based mainly on this work. diffusional time scale is much shorter than
The process by which a dispersed phase in an the settling time scale, a blob of that radius
emulsion separates is similar to the process of should be completely assimilated into the
sedimentation of particles from a fluid. The fun- surrounding magma before it can escape
damental differences are that emulsion particles from the emulsion.

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ZIEG and MARSH

are deformable and can undergo binary and
interfacial coalescence. Binary coalescence is
the process of two particles or blebs combining
during settling to form a larger body, and inter-
facial coalescence is the process of individual
accumulating parcels combining to form the
continuous basal layer. The time scales (tbc and
tic, respectively) of these two coalescence pro-
cesses are critical to the dynamics of separation.
Before discussing these effects, it is useful to
consider separation without coalescence.
Without coalescence, which is effected in
modeling by making the time scales for coales-
cence very large (i.e., tbc = tic → ∞), separation
of an emulsion is a sedimentation process with
deformable particles. Beginning with a well-
mixed column of fluid particles (see Fig. 11)
of various sizes, a dense layer of closely packed
particles begins forming immediately on the
floor, and a light layer of clear, particle-free
fluid begins forming at the top. The upper layer
in particular will always have a markedly sharp
lower boundary, separating clear from particle-
laden fluid. For a heterogeneous assortment of
particles, the size and concentration of particles
increase downward to the basal layer, and the
degree of sorting increases upward in the layer
of deposited particles. The total time required
for all the particles to settle out is given by the
sedimentation time of the smallest size class that
forms the uppermost particle layer just beneath
the light, clear fluid at the top. The final separa-
tion time for any emulsion is found to be 7 times
that of the settling time of the single largest par-
ticle traversing the full system depth (Greenspan
and Ungarish, 1982; Marsh, 1988).
In an emulsion a similar upper interface sepa-
rates the clear fluid from the dispersed phase
fluid. The rate of descent of this interface sets
the time scale of separation of the emulsion with
the final separation time given when it meets the
upward moving basal layer interface. But here
the coalescence time scales (tbc and tic) become
important. If both tbc and tic are short relative to
the Stokes’ law (suitably corrected for a fluid
sphere) settling time, as found earlier, then the
separation time can be significantly shortened
over that of solid particle sedimentation. That
is, for small tbc, the fluid particles coalesce dur-
ing settling (binary coalescence), thus forming
larger masses, which suddenly settle faster until
reaching a zone of higher concentration, where
further rapid settling is hindered. If the rate of
binary coalescence is sluggish, which can hap-
pen for small drops with certain surfactants
or for a dilute dispersed phase, the process is
more akin to solid particle sedimentation. For
the Sudbury Igneous Complex melt sheet, the
large size and gross compositional similarity
of the dispersed mafic phase essentially negate
surface tension and greatly facilitate binary
coalescence, which hastens separation. Interfa-
cial coalescence at the base of the sedimentation
column regulates formation and growth of the
basal mafic layer. The collecting mafic masses
deform, squeezing out all granitic melt, conform
1.0
to one another, and coalesce to form the contin-
uous mafic basal layer. For the same reasons that
tbc is small, tic will also be small, and this, too,
would have been a rapid process in the initial
Sudbury Igneous Complex melt sheet.
The quantitative prediction of the emulsion
separation time depends, as in solid particle set-
tling, on knowing the magnitude of the particle
Reynolds number (Rep = Vs a ρ/μ), where Vs
is the settling velocity of a typical particle of
radius a in a fluid of density ρ and viscosity μ.
Rigorous results tested against experiments are
available for both large and small Rep. Because
of the expected enormous range of size in the
dispersed phase of the Sudbury melt sheet, the
early separation was likely to have been chaotic
and turbulent (i.e., Rep >> 1), and the late stages
were apt to have been dominated by the very
small mafic blobs (<~1 mm), for which Rep <
~1. Although, strictly speaking, the final time
for settling may indeed have been governed
by small Rep results, at this stage thermal
convection may have become strong (see later
discussion) and the period of emulsion separa-
tion truncated. Therefore, to place an upper
bound on the time for separation, we can use
the viscous regime results for small Rep settling
as summarized by Hartland and Jeelani (1994).
Also, to show the basic similarity to solid par-
ticle settling, we assume further that the mafic
parcels do not coalesce during settling but that
interfacial coalescence is rapid (i.e., tbc → ∞;
tic = 0) . The thickness (X) of the emulsion
above the basal layer (i.e., coalesced noritic
melt) is given as a function of time by Hartland
and Jeelani (1994, equation 13.55):

0.8 Experimental Results Δρgdo2 ⎡ (1 − φ s )2 ⎤

X = Xo − ⎢ 1 + 4.56 φ ⎥ t , (1)
18 μ c ⎣ s ⎦
Binary Coalescence 0.6 A
X
ce Xo is the initial emulsion thickness, Δρ is den-
0.4 terfa
g In
ntin sity contrast, g is gravity, do is initial mafic blob
ime
Sed
A 0.2 diameter, μc is the viscosity of the continuous
Interfacial Coalescence phase (granitic melt), φs is the typical volume
C
0 fraction of the mafic blobs in the sedimentation
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
rfac
e (or holdup) zone, and t is time. This equation
B 0.2 Inte can be put in a more familiar and dimensionless
rbed
Co d istu
ale
al U
n form by dividing through by Xo, changing from
0.4scin Fin
g In diameter to radius, and rearranging:
ter
Hold-up fraction
Y fac
e B
0.6

C X Δρgao2 ⎡ 1 ⎤ ⎡ (1 − φ s )2 ⎤
= 1− t. (2)
9 μ c ⎢⎣ Xo ⎥⎦ ⎢⎣ 1 + 4.56 φ s ⎥⎦
0.8
Xo
Coalescing Interface after Hartland and Jeelani (1994)
1.0
t0 tf
The first group on the right is now recognizable
time
as Stokes’ law for the settling velocity (Vos) of a
Figure 11. Separation and compaction of an emulsion. Schematic figures to the left show the solid particle of radius ao, and then the quantity
development of the interfaces leading to the formation of two layers. The figure to the right Vos/Xo is the settling time (tos) of a mafic blob of
shows experimental results from Hartland and Jeelani (1994) for the evolution of an emulsion. radius ao through a distance Xo. The final settling

1438 Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005

 Downloaded from gsabulletin.gsapubs.org on August 27, 2015
or separation time (tf) of the emulsion is found by
setting X/Xo = 0 and solving for t = tf. Namely,
⎡ 1 + 4.56 φ s ⎤
t f = t os ⎢ 2 ⎥
. (3)
⎣ (1 − φ s ) ⎦
The time of final separation is thus a multiple
of the Stokes settling time (tos) for the character-
istic particle size. And for φs = 0.4, for example, tf
= 7.84 tos, which is very nearly the same result as
found by Greenspan and Ungarish (1982), except
that here the characteristic particle size is not
the maximum but the initial characteristic size.
Actual times for separation are given by Figure
10A, where the times are multiplied by a numeri-
cal factor on the order of 10. There is clearly
some uncertainty in the size of the typical magma
parcel that forms the emulsion. Judging from the
breccias in the Onaping Formation, a median size
could very likely be in the range of 1–10 cm.
If the effect of binary coalescence is now
also allowed, some knowledge of the increase
of mafic parcel size must be included; basal
interfacial coalescence is still assumed to be
rapid. For a parcel radius that increases linearly
with time during settling (Hartland and Jeelani,
1994; equation 13.54), and after some manipu-
lation to put their results in a form similar to the
above, we find
⎡t ⎛ t
12
tf (1 + 4.56 φ s ) ⎞ ⎤
= 6 ⎢ bc ⎜ bc + ⎥ . (4)
t os ⎣ t os ⎝ t os (1 − φ s )2 ⎟⎠ ⎦
If the time scale for binary coalescence is
short relative to Stokes’ law for settling (i.e., tbc
<< tos), then this reduces to
tf ⎡ t ⎛ (1 + 4.56 φ s ) ⎞ ⎤
12
= 6 ⎢ bc ⎜ ⎟⎥ . (5)
⎣ t os ⎝ (1 − φ s ) ⎠ ⎦
2
t os
If tbc = tos/10, for example, tf/tos = 5.3; and if tbc
= tos/100, tf/tos = 1.68. These times are broadly
similar, albeit smaller, to the previous results,
where binary coalescence does not occur.
The clear conclusion from these results is
that the Sudbury emulsion separated into basal
mafic and upper felsic layers in a short period
of time, from a few months to, at most, a few
years. This emulsion separation is the main
process that generated the basic compositional
structure of the Sudbury magmatic body. It is a
unique magmatic process tied to the dynamics
of the impact event. Because it happened so rap-
idly, the melt sheet was unable to homogenize
into a compositionally uniform sheet. Yet the
process also maximized the interfacial surface
area, allowing for significant trace element and
Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005
SUDBURY SUPERHEATED IMPACT MELT SHEET
isotopic diffusional exchange between the felsic
and mafic phases.
THERMAL EVOLUTION OF THE
SUDBURY MELT SHEET
Convective Cooling of the Superheated
Melt Sheet
The density-driven vertical streaming of
fluid parcels associated with the separation of
the initial magmatic emulsion into two layers
initially suppressed (see following comments)
thermal convection in the Sudbury melt sheet.
But as emulsion streaming waned and the
emulsion separated into its two primary lay-
ers, vigorous thermal convection set in almost
immediately. The tendency for thermal convec-
tion to occur in a layer of fluid is measured by
the importance of thermal buoyancy relative
to viscous drag and heat transfer by conduc-
tion. These effects are collectively measured
by a dimensionless ratio, the Rayleigh num-
ber (Ra). During magmatic convection the
overall rate of cooling and loss of potential
energy are energetically much more efficient,
despite viscous dissipation, than when the
magma cools by conduction alone. Convection
greatly increases the thermal gradients near the
margins, strongly enhancing the conduction of
heat across the contacts and out of the magma.
The physics of thermal convection in fluids
with various heat sources, geometries, and
boundary conditions is well known (e.g., Chan-
drasekhar, 1981; Turner, 1973; Schubert et al.,
2001). But relatively little is known about ther-
mal convection in fluids undergoing crystalliza-
tion in marginal solidification fronts, especially
in fluids as diverse as silicate magmas (Marsh,
1989a). This uncertainty has spurred some
debate over the strength and style of magmatic
convection, and even the occurrence of thermal
convection in common magmas (e.g., Huppert
and Turner, 1991; Marsh, 1991). There are no
direct experimental observations of magmatic
convection, but there are results for analog flu-
ids. Detailed studies of thermal convection and
crystallization in molten paraffin (Viskanta and
Gau, 1982; Brandeis and Marsh, 1989, 1990)
and a solution of isopropanol and water (Hort
et al., 1999) show that convection sets in rapidly
and persists until all the superheat has been dis-
sipated. The strength of convection decreases
with loss of superheat until the fluid temperature
reaches its liquidus, whereupon thermal convec-
tion ceases. All further cooling is by conduction.
This may be the behavior of many crystallizing
fluids; there is indirect evidence that this is also
the case in magma as observed in, for example,
lava lakes (Hort et al., 1999; Marsh, 1996).
Superheat
Endogenetic (i.e., terrestrially generated)
magmas have long been observed to erupt at
or below the liquidus temperatures. However,
because the magma adiabat and its liquidus
generally have greatly different slopes, ascend-
ing magma always has a tendency to become
superheated. The pervasive lack of superheat
in endogenetic magma bodies may reflect
the efficiency of convection in eliminating
superheat as it occurs during ascent (Marsh,
1989a). Magmas formed by impacts, however,
can become instantly superheated in situ. This
results in vigorous magmatic convection that
lasts until all the magma has cooled to its liqui-
dus temperature.
The initial temperature of the Sudbury melt
sheet was ~1700 °C, well above the dry liquidus
temperatures of both the norite and granophyre
(~1200 °C). This high temperature is predicted
by impact theory and is supported by geological
evidence. It can be shown that the temperature at
the contact of a magmatic body, which persists
for long times, is the average of the initial temper-
atures of the country rock and the magma (e.g.,
Marsh, 1989a). This holds true only if there is
no latent heat involved, which is true for magma
heated beyond its liquidus. The contact tempera-
ture of the basal Sudbury Igneous Complex, esti-
mated by Lakomy (1990) and Zieg (2001) using
two-pyroxene geothermometry in the Footwall
Breccia, was ~1000 °C. This means that the sum
of the magma and country rock temperatures was
~2000 °C. If the initial temperature of the country
rock is assumed to have been ~300 °C (e.g., Iva-
nov and Deutsch, 1999), this gives an estimated
initial melt temperature of 1700 °C. Such a tem-
perature is reasonable and consistent with other
estimates for impact melt temperatures (e.g.,
Grieve et al., 1977; Onorato et al., 1978; Ivanov
and Deutsch, 1999). Although the transient crater
likely had a depth of ~30 km, this deep, highly
focused crater relaxed quickly (~2–3 min) to
form a shallow, wide crater in the upper crust.
The melt sheet was held in this shallow crater. At
the present levels of exposure, the typical country
rock is upper crustal rock. Thus an initial footwall
temperature of 300 °C is reasonable. Slight dif-
ferences in these temperatures have little effect
on the convective cooling scenario presented
here. The effect of the ensuing convection in the
overlying noritic layer on this temperature esti-
mate would be relatively small because the basal
norite was strongly cooled (unlike in convecting
fluids heated from below) and, relative to the top,
would only sluggishly convect. This is not true,
however, for the granophyre at the roof, which
would be expected to melt back aggressively into
the overlying Onaping breccia (see calculations
in Marsh, 1989a, p. 513).
1439
 Downloaded from gsabulletin.gsapubs.org on August 27, 2015
Rayleigh Number (Ra) and the Convective
Regime
The magnitude of the governing Ra at the
onset of convection determines the time scales for
convection to become fully developed and also
for the superheat to be removed from the system.
Ra can be estimated directly from the definition:
αgΔTL3
Ra = , (6)
vκ
where g is gravity, ΔT is the initial amount of
superheat (~500 °C), α is the coefficient of ther-
mal expansion (~5 × 10−5 °C–1), L is the thick-
ness of an individual layer (norite ~1 km, grano-
phyre ~1.5 km), ν is the kinematic viscosity of
the melt layers (norite ~10 cm2/s, granophyre
~100 cm2/s), and κ is the thermal diffusivity
(~10−2 cm2/s). With these values,
Ra = 1015 − 1017 . (7)
For reference, the Ra governing convection
in Earth’s mantle is ~105, and convection com-
mences in a layer of fluid contained between two
solid boundaries heated from below and cooled
from above when Ra = 1708. For one solid
boundary and one fluid boundary Ra = 1100,
which is appropriate for the Sudbury Igneous
Complex layers. This implies that convection
in the Sudbury melt sheet was initially in the
regime of vigorous turbulence (e.g., Khurana,
1988). This means that the thermal regime
was chaotic, and the individual layers would
have been rapidly mixed and homogenized
(Kadanoff, 2001). It is important to emphasize
that, during convection, all the main dynamic
features of the system (e.g., convective velocity,
rate of heat transfer, etc.) depend intimately on
Ra. And it is also important to recognize that if
this process had set in before emulsion separa-
tion, the resulting Sudbury complex very pos-
sibly instead would have been a single homoge-
neous layer of roughly dacitic composition.
The time (t) for convection in each layer to
start and become fully established, e.g., is given
by (e.g., Jhaveri and Homsy, 1982):
2 3
L2 ⎡ B ⎤
t= , (8)
κ ⎢⎣ Ra ⎥⎦
where B (~350) is a constant, and the other
symbols are as above. Using Ra as found ear-
lier, thermal convection in the Sudbury melt
sheet would have fully developed within about
an hour. This reflects the potential strength of
convection owing to the presence of such a
large degree of superheat. But more realisti-
cally, convection probably set in progressively
as the influence of vertical motions waned,
1440 Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005
ZIEG and MARSH
owing to reorganization of the emulsion. The
influence of the vertical streaming attending
the emulsion dynamics can also be gauged by
determining the value of the Péclet number (Pe
= VL/κ), which is a dimensionless velocity that
can be associated with the vertical flows during
emulsion separation. Typical settling velocities
(V) for even small (~10 cm) mafic blobs may
have been on the order of centimeters per sec-
ond, which suggests that Pe ~ 107. In an analo-
gous problem, Gershuni and Zhukhovitskii
(1976) found that for fluids of large Prandtl
number (Pr = ν/κ), like magma, the critical
value of Ra necessary for convection increases
essentially without limit, once Pe becomes
>~102. This means that thermal convection is
greatly suppressed by the vertical streaming.
In the problem they solved, the vertical flow
is generated external to the convecting layer
and cuts across the entire layer, entering at the
bottom boundary and leaving at the top. This is
slightly different than the problem at hand in
which the vertical flow is generated internally,
and there is the possibility that convection may
have progressively set in as heavy and light
magma collected at the floor and roof in lay-
ers as the emulsion progressively separated.
But during much of the emulsion separation
process this analogy should be satisfactory.
Thus, early thermal convection was stifled by
the dynamics of emulsion separation.
Because the final product of the magmatic
emulsion was two superimposed layers rather
than a single superheated layer, it is also nec-
essary to consider the effect of this stacking
on the tendency of each layer to convect. A
similar problem involving two fluid layers of
equal thickness, separated by a solid layer of
arbitrary thickness and thermal conductivity,
was also considered by Gershuni and Zhukho-
vitskii (1976). As the thickness of the central
layer is reduced to zero and is made infinitely
conducting, the magnitude of Ra necessary to
sustain convection becomes smaller than the
usual critical value of 1708. Depending on
the nature of the boundary conditions, both
thermal and dynamic, Ra is found to be in the
range of 720–1304. Thus the effect of having
two superposed layers is to enhance convection
and make the layers less stable. This is because
the upper layer is being heated from below by
convection in the lower layer, and the lower
layer has heat taken unusually efficiently from
its upper surface by convection in the upper
layer. So, the upper surface of the lower layer is
cooled more strongly than if it were in contact
with a solid, conductive medium, which gener-
ates plumes along this interface and promotes
convection, which in turn stimulates convec-
tion in the upper layer.
Convective Thermal History
It is of central importance to estimate how
long it took for these convecting layers to dis-
sipate the superheat and bring each layer to its
liquidus temperature. This is the amount of
time available for chemically homogenizing
each layer and for controlling the distribution of
the immiscible droplets of sulfide liquid, which
very likely initially appeared during the convec-
tive cooling stage (Lightfoot et al., 2001). (More
on the role of convection and sulfide deposition
will come later.)
The two layers of magma cool by transfer-
ring heat into the underlying footwall crust and
the overlying fallback breccia. In the footwall
rocks, heat flow would have been dominated
by conduction; a hydrothermal system would
have had limited effectiveness in transferring
heat if it was trapped beneath the melt sheet
(e.g., Bergantz, 1989; Marsh, 1989b). In the
overlying fallback breccia of the Onaping
Formation, however, a strong hydrothermal
system likely developed (e.g., Ames et al., 1998,
2002), even without assuming that the crater
formed in a shallow sea (e.g., Peredery and
Morrison, 1984). Even so, the fallback breccia
nearest the melt was strongly heated and tightly
welded, perhaps even strongly melted, forming
a relatively thin conductive blanket above the
sheet. Thus two extremes can be assumed for
the boundary conditions that controlled heat
transfer in the rocks surrounding the melt sheet.
We will first assume that the sheet was cooled
rapidly owing to hydrothermal transfer in the
roof and footwall, and second, we will assume
that the sheet was deeply embedded in a purely
conductive medium.
Rapid convective cooling. The average
temperature (T) in a rapidly convecting layer,
strongly cooled from its margins, especially
from above, is given by (e.g., Jaupart and
Brandeis, 1986):
−1 b
⎡ t⎤
T = TL + ΔTo ⎢1 + ⎥ , (9)
⎣ τ⎦
where TL is the liquidus temperature, ΔTo is the
amount of superheat, t is time, and τ is a group
of parameters that characterize the overall cool-
ing time. The value of τ is given by:
L2
τ= Ra − b. (10)
2Cbκ ′
The symbols used here are as defined above,
except for C and b, which come from the
parametric relationship (Nu = C Rab) between
the rate of heat transfer, as measured by the
dimensionless Nusselt number (Nu), and Ra.
(Nu measures the magnitude of heat transfer by
 Downloaded from gsabulletin.gsapubs.org on August 27, 2015
SUDBURY SUPERHEATED IMPACT MELT SHEET

convection relative to that by conduction.) For
high Ra convection, typical values of these con-
stants are b = 1⁄3 and C = 0.4 (e.g., Turner, 1973;
Marsh, 1989a). The thermal diffusivity (κ′ =
Kc/ρCp) derived here contains mixed proper-
ties; the thermal conductivity (Kc) is of the wall
rock, and the density (ρ) and specific heat (Cp)
are of the magma, but a representative value of
~10−2 cm2/s is still appropriate.
The drop in temperature, as calculated using
equation 4, is shown in Figure 12A. The super-
heat in the Sudbury melt sheet could have been
dissipated in ~10 yr. This reflects the great effi-
ciency of thermal convection in removing heat
from a layer when there is little resistance to
heat flow at the margins.
Slower convective cooling in a conductive
medium. For this extreme, we consider a melt
sheet sandwiched between upper and lower rock
units that transfer heat only by conduction. To
assure that this is the slowest possible rate of
convective cooling and to simplify the problem,
we further assume that the upper and lower
layers of country rock are infinitely thick. The
temperature of the magma as a function of time
is given by Carslaw and Jaeger (1986; see also
Marsh, 1989a):
have different crystallization temperatures [see
the following], it is likely that the granophyre
convected after the norite had become stagnant.)
Once convection ceased, the magma continued
to cool solely by conduction of heat from its
upper and lower boundaries.
Pattern of Convection
Patterns of fluid flow occur in all types of
convection, but the most distinctive and well-
organized ones occur when the flow is laminar
(e.g., Kadanoff, 2001; Turner, 1973). Laminar
flow occurred in the Sudbury Igneous Complex,
once cooling reduced the governing Ra to ~107.
In laminar thermal convection, the spatial scale
of the cells is set by the thickness of the convect-
ing layer. The cells would have been approxi-
mately circular in cross section and hexagonal
in plan form with a characteristic size on the
order of ~1 km. Hot fluid rises as plumes in
the centers of each cell and cools and descends
around the margins of the hexagons. The flows
are also mainly local, with no basin-scale lateral
exchange of material. If the boundaries of the
fluid are perfectly smooth with uniform thermal
properties, the flow pattern may roam or show
a time-dependent nature, especially at higher
values of Ra. But if there are irregularities in
the boundaries that influence the thermal field,
the pattern of convection can become pinned
or fixed by these features. The numerous well-
known breccia-containing depressions known as
embayments in the Sudbury Igneous Complex
(e.g., Pye et al., 1984; Lightfoot et al., 1997c,

T − Tw ⎛ x ⎞
Tm − Tw
)
= exp ( hx + h 2 κt erfc ⎜
⎝ 4 κt
+ h κt ⎟ , (11)
⎠

where exp and erfc are, respectively, the expo-

nential and complementary error functions, Tm
is the initial magma temperature, Tw is the initial
wall rock temperature, x is the vertical spatial
coordinate, and h = ρCp/MCp′, where ρ is wall
rock density, Cp and Cp′ are the specific heats of,
respectively, the wall rock and magma, and M
is the mass of magma (of density ρ′) in contact
with a unit area of wall rock. For a melt sheet
of thickness L cooling from above and below
where Cp ~ Cp′, M = ρ′L/2, and ρ ~ ρ′, whence h
= 2/L, the temperature of the magma over time
is found by setting x = 0:

T − Tw
Tm − Tw
= exp ( 4 F ) erfc ( )
4F , (12)

where F = κt/L2. Because the magma is always
well mixed and of uniform temperature, the con-
tact temperature is also the overall magma tem-
perature. In this example, the magma reaches its
liquidus temperature in ~10,000 yr (Fig. 12B).
From these two bounding examples, it is clear
that the phase of highly vigorous convection in
the melt sheet lasts a relatively short period of
time, probably between a few tens of years and
a few hundred years. (Because the two layers
Figure 12. Thermal history of the Sudbury melt sheet. (A) Convective cooling with rapid
heat transfer (hydrothermal circulation?) in overlying breccia. Entire melt sheet cools to the
liquidus in ~10 yr. (B) Convective cooling with slow heat transfer by conduction in the sur-
rounding country rocks. Melt sheet cools to liquidus in ~10,000 yr. (C) Entire thermal his-
tory of melt sheet, including rapid convection down to the liquidus, followed by conductive
cooling. The history shown here is for a point at approximately the position of the Transition
Zone; for positions above or below, the conductive cooling would have been slightly faster.
This scenario includes hydrothermal circulation in the overlying Onaping to yield rapid
convective cooling in the melt sheet. Slower convective cooling, dominated by conductive
heat transport through the Onaping, would not yield significantly different results.

Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005 1441

 Downloaded from gsabulletin.gsapubs.org on August 27, 2015
2001) may have been instrumental in control-
ling the pattern of convection. These commonly
deep (50–200 m) embayments are prime sites
for ore deposits. Because embayments also
contained magma, across any level or horizontal
surface above them the temperature was slightly
hotter; cooling would have been slower than
in neighboring areas. This uneven basal tem-
perature field induces an upward flow that pins
a convective upwelling over each embayment.
With the convection cells thus pinned, the gen-
eral field of convection may have been similarly
fixed in place throughout the crater. This may
have had a profound effect on the process of ore
deposition, which is considered later.
Convective Mixing across the Norite-
Granophyre Interface
When one convecting fluid overlies another,
shear and deformation at the interface may
entrain material from each layer and cause
mixing across the interface. From results pre-
sented by Bachmann and Bergantz (2004) for
the density contrast (~0.15 g/cm3; 150 kg/m3)
and viscosity ratio >~10 of the immediately
post-emulsion sheet, the rate of entrainment at
the interface would be ~10 cm/yr. With thermal
convection lasting for, at most, a few hundred
years, a mixed interface (or alternatively an
eroded interface) of a thickness of ~10 m
might be expected. Although this effect may
have contributed to the structure of the Transi-
tion Zone because of the relatively short period
of convection, entrainment probably had little
effect on the overall chemical nature of the two
superposed layers of magma. If convection had
persisted for a significant part (say, 10,000 yr)
of the full period of solidification, however, it
is likely that much of the two-layered structure
of the Sudbury Igneous Complex would have
been destroyed.
Conductive Cooling of the Melt Sheet
In contrast to convective cooling, which
lowers the magma temperature rapidly and
uniformly, conductive cooling involves the slow
migration of lower temperatures inward from
the margins. Once convection brought the entire
melt sheet down to its liquidus temperature,
crystallization began at the margins, forming
solidification fronts (e.g., Marsh, 1996, 2000).
These fronts progressively advanced inward
from the top and bottom until they met in the
thermal center, which was the eventual location
of the Transition Zone. This major change in
cooling style set the stage for the ultimate pet-
rologic structure of the entire melt sheet. The
conduction phase, wherein the entire melt sheet
solidified, lasted ~75,000 yr (Zieg, 2001).
1442 Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005
ZIEG and MARSH
Perhaps the single most unique characteristic
of the Sudbury melt sheet is that the temperature
at the lower contact was close to the solidus
temperature of the overlying noritic magma,
~1000 °C. In ordinary magmatic bodies in the
upper crust, the contact temperature is far below
the solidus temperature. This unique thermal
condition for the Sudbury Igneous Complex is
another consequence of the initial superheated
thermal state of the magma. What makes this
condition even more significant is that the tem-
perature at the contact of an intrusion does not
decrease until the solidification front reaches the
center of the body (e.g., Jaeger, 1968). Thus, the
contact temperature remained constant for tens
of thousands of years until the leading edge of
the solidification front, which initiates the first
wave of nucleation and crystal growth, reached
the top of the norite. Only then did the contact
temperature slowly begin to fall. For the entire
time that the temperature at the footwall bound-
ary remained fixed, the solidus isotherm was
pinned at or near the footwall contact, while
the liquidus isotherm migrated upward into
the melt sheet. The solidification front thus
became increasingly thick until it spanned the
entire thickness of the norite. At that point,
the basal norite was at its solidus temperature,
and the uppermost norite was at its liquidus
temperature, forming an extensive crystalline
network or trellis. This allowed ample time for
residual silicate melts to move upward, perhaps
partly by compaction, to feed the Transition
Zone area. Immiscible sulfide melts migrat-
ing downward through the crystalline network
coalesced, also in the fashion of an emulsion,
to form large, heavy melts that moved, perhaps
even by deforming the silicate network, to the
base; small sulfide melt droplets were trapped
locally, perhaps partly explaining some of the
observations of Mungall (2002).
Something similar was happening in the
upper half of the melt sheet. Dry felsic magma
was in contact with a thick pile of fallback brec-
cia. This breccia was hot owing to its initial
temperature, the excavation process of crater-
ing, and possibly also from having been sur-
rounded by hot silicate plasma (i.e., vaporized
rock) in the atmosphere. Although it is difficult
to be certain, the initial temperature at the upper
contact of the melt sheet was probably also near
1000 °C, at or slightly above the solidus tem-
perature of dry felsic magma. There is a strong
possibility, as mentioned earlier, that the over-
lying Onaping breccia was extensively melted
back by the earlier vigorous convection. This
may have been the origin of the plagioclase-rich
granophyre, which has chemical affinities to the
Onaping (Ames et al., 2002). Small amounts
of water in the melted breccia may have
gravitationally stabilized this magma over the
underlying original dry and dense granophyre.
Rapidly developing hydrothermal systems in
the fallback breccia and a closer proximity to the
surface caused the granophyre to cool somewhat
faster than the norite. The upper solidification
front therefore advanced faster than the lower
one, and they met roughly at the present-day
boundary between the two layers.
The meeting of the upper and lower solidifi-
cation fronts led to a specific set of conditions
that strongly influenced the physical and chemi-
cal evolution of the melt sheet. First, it maxi-
mized the opportunity for interstitial melt to be
redistributed within the solidification fronts.
Second, it provided, through an interconnected
network of plagioclase crystals in the norite, a
lattice or framework of physical rigidity. The
slight compaction of this crystalline network
(there is no evidence of strong compaction
in the basal norite), and the attendant rise of
buoyant residual liquids from the crystallizing
norite, provide additional explanation for the
unusual chemical composition (e.g., high P2O5
and TiO2) of the quartz gabbro in the Transition
Zone. Third, the crystalline mush eventually had
sufficient physical strength to provide support
for the unusual weight of the Transition Zone,
which is the densest unit in the entire Sudbury
Igneous Complex. Although the leading zone
of the solidification front (0%–25% crystals) is
a dispersed suspension of nuclei and tiny crys-
tals, a “chicken wire” network of plagioclase of
some strength develops once the crystallinity is
greater than ~30 vol% (Philpotts et al., 1998;
Marsh, 2002). This is particularly relevant to the
norite, which is modally dominated by plagio-
clase. The densest part of the Transition Zone
therefore must have formed after these fronts
had reached the boundary between the two lay-
ers of magma and had undergone a further 30%
of crystallization.
The interpretation that the leading edge of
the norite solidification front arrived well before
that of the granophyre is reinforced by the dif-
ference in liquidus temperatures for these two
magmas. Our modeling of the phase equilibria
of these compositions using MELTS (Ghiorso
and Sack, 1995) gives a liquidus temperature for
the felsic norite of 1200 °C and for the grano-
phyre of 1075 °C (both dry at 0.1 GPa). The
advance of the norite solidification front thus
stalled here, and crystallinity increased to ~30%
before the granophyre front arrived.
The duration of solidification can be mod-
eled numerically. If convection is assumed to
have rapidly and uniformly lowered the magma
temperature to its liquidus, then complete solidi-
fication requires ~75,000 yr (Zieg, 2001). If no
convection is assumed, and all cooling from
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the initial superheated state is accomplished
solely by conduction, solidification requires
~500,000 yr (Ivanov and Deutsch, 1999). The
effect of convection in rapidly bringing the
entire melt sheet down to its liquidus is read-
ily apparent in these numbers. The progressive
thermal evolution of the melt sheet is shown
by Figure 12C, which includes the effects of
convection and also takes into account the latent
heat of crystallization (Zieg, 2001).
The textural and modal uniformity of the
norite is a direct reflection of this protracted
phase of cooling and crystallization. Under
casual observation, there is little noticeable
change in grain size upward through the norite.
But a quantitative measure of plagioclase grain
size and abundance, using the method of crystal
size distributions (CSDs), shows a clear, pro-
gressive upward increase in crystal size (Zieg
and Marsh, 2002). And when the conductive
cooling model is coupled with a law governing
plagioclase growth rate, the predicted spatial
variation in crystal size closely matches that
observed. This variation in texture is as expected
with protracted basal cooling of a stagnant sheet
of noritic magma.
POST-EMULSION BRECCIAS
During the protracted solidification of the
Sudbury Igneous Complex, breccia on the crater
floor and in the overlying Onaping Formation
formed plumes of debris that entered the melt
sheet. This is yet another consequence of the
unusually hot thermal conditions at the lower
and upper margins of the melt sheet. In normal
endogenetic magmas, strongly chilled margins
form at both contacts, freezing in place any
debris initially present. But at Sudbury, because
the lower contact was held at or very near the
solidus and the granophyre melted back the roof,
no chilled margins were formed. Once the norite
became sufficiently dense from crystallization,
this allowed low-density breccia to ascend into
the norite magma and melt. Similarly, rafts of
dense fallback breccia were able to fall from the
roof into the underlying felsic magma.
The granite blocks and the Transition Zone
breccia are evidence for processes that operated
extensively throughout the cooling and solidi-
fication process. Discontinuous deposits of
the Footwall Breccia up to 150 m thick, found
on the floor of the Sudbury Igneous Complex,
may be remnants of breccia debris that initially
blanketed the entire crater floor. That many
areas of the footwall today are devoid of brec-
cia (Coats and Snajdr, 1984; Lakomy, 1990)
further suggests that some of the original debris
floated up into the norite and was melted and
assimilated into the overlying melt sheet. Mafic
Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005
SUDBURY SUPERHEATED IMPACT MELT SHEET
and ultramafic debris too dense to rise through
the noritic magma stayed on the crater floor,
where it is preserved as melanocratic inclusions
in the norite (e.g., Lightfoot et al., 1997c), but
granitic material as fragments or molten blobs
easily could have traversed the norite and been
assimilated into the granophyre (e.g., Golightly,
1994). This process could have operated effi-
ciently from the earliest stages of formation
of the melt sheet, and certainly contributed to
cooling the superheated melt sheet (Golightly,
1994). The debris remaining on the floor either
was too dense to rise upward or became trapped
in areas such as footwall embayments. Because
of the slightly higher surface area to volume
ratio, embayments initially experienced slightly
faster cooling, which “tacked” the breccia pile
together, freezing it in place. Granitic dikes
emanating upward from embayment breccia
piles suggest, however, that the upper parts of
these breccia piles became hot enough to melt
and re-intrude the norite in the later stages of
solidification (J. Fedorowich, 2000, personal
commun.; P. Binney, 2002, personal commun.).
The sheet-like geometry of some granitic
blocks found in the South Range norite, espe-
cially above the Murray pluton, suggests that
they may have formed by thermal shattering
of the footwall. Enormous thermal stresses
were readily generated in the already frac-
tured country rocks by sudden heating by final
emplacement of the superheated melt sheet dur-
ing collapse of the transient impact crater. The
magnitude of these stresses (σ) depends on the
parameter group (e.g., Marsh, 1982):
EαΔT
σ≈ , (13)
(1 − v )
where E is Young’s modulus, α is the coefficient
of thermal expansion, ΔT is the thermal contrast,
and ν is Poisson’s ratio. With several hundreds of
degrees of heating, stresses of 0.1–0.3 GPa can
be generated. This is well beyond the compres-
sive strength of granitic rocks (e.g., Jaeger and
Cook, 1979). If the rock contains any hydrous
phases (e.g., micas or amphiboles), even greater
stresses can be generated. Because heating
expands rocks at the contact, the stress is com-
pressive parallel to the interface, buckling sheets
of rock from footwall units. This process has
been employed in India, where slabs of granite
were routinely quarried by moving an expanding
fire line across a quarry floor (Marsh, 1982).
At the upper contact of the melt sheet, early
incipient melting of the Onaping breccia led to
piecemeal foundering and invasion by the felsic
magma. The net result was probably extensive
melting of the Onaping. Especially in the early
vigorous thermal convection phase, the melted
blocks may have been fully assimilated and
homogenized into the granophyre. The plagio-
clase-rich granophyre, which appears in places
as a slightly later intrusion (Peredery and Nal-
drett, 1975; Peredery and Morrison, 1984), may
reflect this process. As convection waned with
approach to the liquidus temperature, more and
more blocks may have survived transit through
the granophyre, and eventually plumes of debris
reached neutral buoyancy in the Transition
Zone. The Transition Zone breccia appears to
have been at least partially molten when it was
incorporated into the Transition Zone and there-
fore is evidence for viscous immiscibility and
also for an absence of convective stirring in the
felsic host magma. Although the Transition Zone
breccia and the surrounding gabbro were almost
certainly molten at the same time, as evidenced
by a lack of chilling and by the shape of the Tran-
sition Zone breccia outcrop in the field (Fig. 6),
the sharp contact between the two units indicates
a lack of significant physical interaction.
In the norite, granitic blocks moved upward
through denser, partially crystalline mafic
magma. The latest rising blocks, which became
trapped in the lower solidification front, provide
evidence for this process. The trapped blocks
are generally large, which would have given
them the buoyancy required to overcome the
strength of the crystalline network in the solidi-
fication front. Their upward motion is reflected
in the trail of smaller blocks that were shed as
they sluggishly moved upward. In area B of
Figure 6, for example, a large (~50 m) granitic
block exposed in the railroad cut has a trail of
small blocks around its lower sides and bottom
but none around the top.
All the granitic blocks that we have seen are
notable for their fine (~1 mm), uniform grain
size. Although the Murray granite does not
have an especially coarse texture, many coarse-
grained (5–10 mm grain size) granitic rocks are
exposed in the footwall; the nearby Creighton
granite is one example. In light of the large vari-
ety of footwall lithologies, it seems clear that
in response to the intense heating accompany-
ing impact and melt sheet emplacement, all of
these blocks have been recrystallized. However,
reheating of materials at near solidus tempera-
tures usually brings about annealing and coars-
ening of textures. The strong and characteristic
reduction in grain size shown by these blocks
may be the result of shock metamorphism.
The net result of the vertical transport of
breccia and granite fragments is the progres-
sive collection of lithic debris at the interface
between the mafic and felsic magmas, as was
also described by Smith and Silver (1975) for
a composite diabase-granophyre sill. Some of
1443
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the granitic blocks from the footwall contained
volatiles that would have been released at this
interface. (Whether they formed bubbles or
remained in solution is unclear.) That volatiles
concentrated at this level, presumably hindered
in ascent by the more viscous overlying magma,
is evident from the presence of miarolitic cavi-
ties in the Transition Zone in the Azilda area.
Because it was the interface between the
high-density norite and the low-density grano-
phyre, the Transition Zone most likely formed
simply as a locus for the collection of “exotic”
lithologies falling from above and rising from
below. The fact, which we consider accidental,
that the Transition Zone is also the thermal
center of the melt sheet allowed it to continue
developing until the last stages of solidification;
it is the petrologic sandwich zone of the entire
melt sheet. Moreover, because the debris that
collected here came from many source rocks,
the net oxidation state would also have been
unusual. From the high abundance of Fe-Ti
oxides in this unit, the fugacity of oxygen dur-
ing solidification must have been high (prob-
ably significantly above the nickel-nickel oxide
[NNO] buffer), favoring early precipitation of
ilmenite and magnetite. Vestiges of volatile and
lithic gathering may have tailed out downward
into the uppermost norite such that the latest
stage crystallization could produce a primary
hydrous phase like hornblende (Therriault et
al., 2002), but this is not to be construed that the
entire body was extensively hydrated.
DISCUSSION
The nearly instantaneous production of
a magmatic viscous emulsion by meteorite
impact and its subsequent rapid density-driven
separation into felsic and mafic layers is
proposed here as the principal process in the
formation of the Sudbury Igneous Complex.
This is broadly similar to a model proposed by
Golightly (1994), who was the first to explicitly
recognize the importance of density contrasts
within the melt sheet as a primary reason for
the granophyre-norite association. Unlike his
model, however, the viscous emulsion model
is based on the premise that the primary impact
melt sheet, while totally molten, initially had
essentially the same heterogeneous character
as the surrounding impact breccia units. Rather
than a single homogeneous superheated melt
phase, which assimilated and was cooled
by a density-stratified solid clast population
(Golightly, 1994), the viscous emulsion model
contends that the impact event produced a melt
sheet consisting of a heterogeneous distribu-
tion of liquids corresponding to the spectrum
of target lithologies. The viscous emulsion
1444 Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005
ZIEG and MARSH
also allowed a rapid, intimate, diffusion-driven
chemical exchange between the molten parcels,
which is a condition necessary to achieve the
final chemical state. Both models, however, rely
on the central tenet of a primary compositional
stratification in the melt sheet before crystalliza-
tion commenced.
The great value of the emulsion model, and
subsequent related processes, is that it explains
the unusual physical and chemical structure of
the complex and places it squarely in the context
of the meteorite impact process. It is simply a
natural consequence of a major impact. Under-
lying the whole model thus is the recognition
that a primary feature of meteorite impacts is
the production of breccias of all types, solid
and liquid. The specific characteristics of these
breccias depend on their place of origin within
the impact structure, but the primary process
in an explosive event of this magnitude is the
mechanical mixing of disparate lithologies.
We thus view the melt sheet of this impact as
another breccia phase in which most or all of
the components are molten. After the Sudbury
impact, the molten breccia rapidly rearranged
itself according to density contrasts into the two
primary layers of the Sudbury Igneous Com-
plex, whereas the solid breccias are preserved in
the Onaping Formation, Footwall Breccia, and
Sudbury Breccia.
The isotopic compositions of Sudbury
Igneous Complex rocks, as mentioned earlier,
clearly indicate a crustal origin for the entire
complex (e.g., Faggart et al., 1985; Walker et
al., 1991; Deutsch, 1994; Dickin et al., 1996,
1999). The possibility of mantle contributions
to the norite cannot be conclusively ruled out,
using geochemical data, but this is not neces-
sary (Lightfoot et al., 1997a, 2001). This,
combined with the strong similarity between
the bulk compositions of the complex and the
crustal rocks in the Sudbury region (Grieve et
al., 1991), indicates that the melt sheet was pro-
duced through direct melting of the underlying
continental crust. Yet, within the melt sheet, val-
ues of initial 87Sr/86Sr are uniform (Dickin et al.,
1999), reflecting the intimate association of the
granophyre and norite magmas during density
separation of the emulsion, mutual assimilation
of small melt parcels, and subsequent thorough
convective mixing of each layer.
Perhaps the earliest record of the nature of
the local melt sheet is the material found at the
base of the crater in the offset dikes and sublayer
norites. The quartz diorites of the offset dikes
were probably emplaced as rapid withdrawals
from the earliest melt sheet during collapse
of the transient crater (e.g., Scott and Keith,
2002). The sublayer perhaps was emplaced
only slightly (tens of seconds) later as melt and
breccia debris sloshed to rest in the final shallow
crater (e.g., Lightfoot et al., 2001). The duration
of these events, however, certainly overlapped.
The field relations between these units from
one area to another are, and should be, complex
and even contradictory. The breccias and sub-
layer along the crater floor record, in essence,
the “high water mark” of the superheated melt
sheet. Mafic and ultramafic lithics at or near the
floor at the close of the excavation event were
able to escape fusion and moved into place with
the melt, whereas the mainly granitic, metamor-
phic breccias were locally derived vestiges of
the initial brecciation front. The sublayer norite
is literally riddled with inclusions of many
scales and contains melt pods in the Whistle
embayment of “immiscible patches of melano-
cratic material in a matrix of more leucocratic
material” on the scale of centimeters to meters
(Lightfoot et al., 1997b). “Some quartz diorite
pods [of the offset dikes] contain 2 or perhaps
more delicately inter-fingered types of textur-
ally distinct quartz diorite” (Grant and Bite,
1984). The quartz diorites of the offset dikes
also have a strong chemical affinity to the main
Sudbury Igneous Complex (Lightfoot et al.,
1997a). They are, on average, slightly more
compositionally evolved than the norite (SiO2
~59 wt%), have identical La/Sm, and partially
fill the compositional gap between norite and
granophyre. The compositional range of the
family of the quartz diorites from the various
embayments is, however, significantly broader
(e.g., SiO2 ~55–63 wt%) than that of the norite
of the main mass (Lightfoot et al., 1997a). This
could well represent the initial compositional
heterogeneity of the basal part of the melt sheet
prior to thorough convective mixing, which fol-
lowed offset dike emplacement. The most mafic
offset dikes seem to be from deepest in the origi-
nal crater, and the more silicic ones from higher
on the crater wall (Ames et al., 2002). The vitric
bodies throughout the overlying Onaping For-
mation, which are thought to represent, in part,
ejected dollops of the developing melt sheet,
are remarkably uniform in composition (SiO2
~62 wt%), with strong, albeit more siliceous,
affinities to the norite, even though the attendant
lithic fragment population is compositionally
heterogeneous (Ames et al., 2002). The earliest
compositional record of the Sudbury complex
thus seems to support the presence of an emul-
sion-like magmatic body.
The compositional structure of the complex,
particularly the relative abundances of grano-
phyre and norite, argues against major in situ
differentiation of an initially uniform parental
magma into the roughly bimodal assemblage
seen today (e.g., Ariskin et al., 1999). This is
particularly evident when the Sudbury complex
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SUDBURY SUPERHEATED IMPACT MELT SHEET

is compared to a noritic system like the Ferrar (Fig. 13). Detailed chemostratigraphic studies separation process allowed intimate physical
dolerites of Antarctica that show strong crys- also suggest that, once established, the melt and chemical interaction before subsequent
tal fractionation (Marsh, 2004; Fig. 13). In sheet crystallized from the base up and the top vigorous but short-lived thermal convection
thoroughly accessible systems, differentiation down (Lightfoot et al., 2001). For example, the “homogenized” each unit. Thus, the Sudbury
through crystal fractionation clearly produces norite becomes depleted upward in Ni and Cu, complex can be considered to be an invaluable
a continuous range of compositions, similar to perhaps from to slight late-stage compaction, sample of the bulk chemical composition of
that exhibited by the Ferrar dolerites in an AFM and the granophyre exhibits increasing incom- the continental crust in this region during the
diagram (Fig. 13). The SIC, instead, shows up patible elements downward with decreasing Middle Proterozoic and also an example of a
as two distinct groups of compositions (Hess, magnesia. Also, detailed CSD textural analysis unique magma chamber.
1960; Grant and Bite, 1984). An even more shows that the norite clearly crystallized from
revealing lack of control of protracted phase the bottom up (Zieg and Marsh, 2002). How The Ultimate Magma Chamber
equilibria for producing the gross Sudbury this solidification occurs without allowing sig- Experiment—The Sudbury Igneous
Igneous Complex structure is apparent if the nificant crystal fraction is considered later. Complex and the Null Hypothesis
same data are plotted on the basalt norma- The solution to the Sudbury Igneous Com-
tive phase diagram (e.g., Walker et al., 1979; plex petrologic enigma is that the impact melt Petrologists have often assumed that most
Stolper, 1980). In comparison to the Ferrar sheet, which consisted exclusively of crustal major magmatic bodies are formed by means
dolerites (and a great many other bodies), the material, rapidly became compositionally of a single, virtually instantaneous emplace-
Sudbury Igneous Complex compositions show stratified shortly after emplacement because ment of crystal-free melt (e.g., Wager and
little adherence to the known phase boundaries of the bimodal nature of the target rocks. The Deer, 1939; Hess, 1960). Convective stirring
during subsequent cooling is believed to sort
and deposit crystals growing in the interior of
the chamber into distinct layers on the floor
and margins of the intrusion. A primary basal-
tic magma thereby produces a spectrum of
increasingly fractionated residual melts, which
are partitioned into a continuously diminishing
volume. This general process is thought to be
responsible for the diversity of igneous rocks
and ultimately to give rise to the differentiated
structure of Earth itself. Differentiation by
this style of fractional crystallization in large
bodies remains an implicit, fundamental, and
largely untested tenet of igneous petrology.
In contrast to the convection-fractional crystal-
lization model, the null hypothesis (Marsh, 1996)
states that any body of magma emplaced free of
crystals will crystallize into a compositionally
and mineralogically uniform layer of rock. The
highly fractionated melt is trapped deep within
inwardly propagating solidification fronts and
is inaccessible to collection by ordinary means
(Marsh, 1996, 2002). The ultimate experiment
in igneous petrology would determine which of
these models is correct. This would involve phys-
ically and chemically monitoring the evolution of
a thick sheet of homogeneous basaltic magma,
which has been instantaneously emplaced at a
uniform, superliquidus temperature (and thus is
initially free of crystals and nuclei). Although
similar conditions have long been assumed for
the emplacement of most large intrusions (e.g.,
Wager and Deer, 1939), in point of fact the
Figure 13. Contrast in the chemical compositions of the Sudbury rocks relative to the Ferrar actual conditions of emplacement (e.g., dura-
dolerites of Antarctica (Marsh, 2004). The upper AFM (alkali-iron-magnesium) plots show tion, amounts, temperatures, crystal contents, and
the compositional gap between the norite and granophyre units at Sudbury, and also the loose styles of injections) for almost all igneous bodies
overall coherence of the compositions relative to the Ferrar rocks. This is even more clearly are unknown. According to the null hypothesis,
seen in the lower diagrams, which show these same compositions relative to the phase equilib- the initial state of any magmatic body completely
rium boundaries in the basalt system (projection from Walker et al., 1979; see text). The lack controls its entire subsequent evolution.
of adherence of the Sudbury compositions to the phase boundaries strongly suggests that these One of the most important implications of this
compositions are not the result of crystallization controlled by common phase equilibria. work, beyond the origin of the Sudbury Igneous

Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005 1445

 Downloaded from gsabulletin.gsapubs.org on August 27, 2015
Complex itself, is that it provides the only known
example of a large magmatic system whose
initial conditions are, relatively speaking, well
known. The initial conditions of the Sudbury
complex were similar to those long assumed
for many classical large igneous bodies. First, it
was formed in a single instantaneous “injection”
of superheated magma, instantaneous within
a period of minutes. Second, because of its
superheated nature, it contained no phenocrysts
or crystal nuclei. (Although there was entrained
impact debris, this material was volumetrically
insignificant.) And finally, the geometry of the
system was extremely simple: a flat horizontal
sheet of high aspect ratio. This melt sheet crystal-
lized to produce a thick, relatively homogeneous
rock sequence. Unlike other large mafic bodies,
there is no distinctive cyclical layering, either
modal or cryptic. Despite strong thermal convec-
tion in each unit, there is no compositional sort-
ing within any of them. Nor are there large pro-
gressive chemical variations through the norite
or the granophyre; the primary geochemical
changes are abrupt discontinuities in the narrow
Transition Zone. The system largely resembles
two adjacent but petrogenetically isolated sheets.
This bimodality is an accident: if the impact had
occurred in a completely granitic terrane, we
would expect a uniform felsic melt sheet; if it
had occurred in a completely basaltic terrane, we
would expect a uniform mafic melt sheet regard-
less of its thickness.
The Sudbury Igneous Complex thus is dramatic
confirmation of the null hypothesis, namely, that
magma emplaced instantly and free of crystals
crystallizes into a nearly homogeneous sheet.
This is seen not only in the Sudbury complex but
in any magmatic sheet formed under these condi-
tions. The thick (350 m) Peneplain Sill of doleritic
composition in the McMurdo Dry Valleys region
of Antarctica also shows these characteristics of
uniformity in texture and composition (Marsh,
1996). Contrary to long-held assumptions, these
initial conditions do not lead to the production of
layered mafic intrusions. What, then, are the con-
ditions that give rise to large, exotically layered,
sheet-like intrusions such as Bushveld (Wager
and Brown, 1968; Eales and Cawthorn, 1996),
Stillwater (McCallum, 1996), or Dufek (Ford and
Himmelberg, 1991)? The most obvious answer is
that these bodies form from exactly the opposite
initial conditions: i.e., magma amassed through a
long series of injections of compositionally simi-
lar magmas carrying highly variable amounts of
crystals of significant average size. The larger
the volume of the ultimate magma chamber,
the more protracted and varied the sequence and
nature of the individual injections required to fill
it. There is simply no terrestrial process capable
1446 Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005
ZIEG and MARSH
of instantly generating and emplacing enormous
volumes of crystal-free magma.
Granitic Textures
The coarse texture of granitic rocks has long
been understood to reflect slow cooling with a
dominance of crystal growth over nucleation
(e.g., Swanson, 1977). But the Sudbury Igneous
Complex granophyre suggests that these two
factors alone do not explain the entire process of
granite texture development. The granophyre is
massive, >1.5 km thick, and it cooled relatively
slowly beneath several kilometers of fallback
breccia. Although these conditions seem ideal
for generating a granitic texture, this is not what
is found in the granophyre. All of the granitic
and gneissic target rocks from which this unit
was derived are coarse grained, so it is not the
specific chemical composition of this magma
that controls the texture. One likely explana-
tion is that the granophyre was superheated
before it crystallized. Superheating destroyed
all crystals and nuclei, and homogeneous
nucleation is a very difficult process (Lofgren,
1983). That is, when the Sudbury melt sheet
was superheated, it lost its original textural
template, and the granophyre was unable to
regenerate a coarse-grained texture. Moreover,
the complete or near complete loss of volatiles
further hindered nucleation and eutectic-like
phase equilibrium. (Wholesale flash melting
of crustal rock produces a low volatile magma
that is further dehydrated by superheating and
vigorous convection.) This may imply that the
coarse textures of continental granitic rocks
result, not from a single protracted growth epi-
sode, but perhaps from cycles of crystallization
and recrystallization of mushy damp magmas.
In essence, the coarse granitic texture may be
a “learned” texture from cycles of partial melt-
ing and metamorphism that have, in essence,
annealed the continental crust.
Evidence for such a process may be seen
in the silicic rocks of oceanic islands, includ-
ing Iceland. In Iceland there are many large
(1–2 km) intrusions with granitic compositions
but none with truly granite textures, only felsitic
or granophyric textures (e.g., Walker, 1966,
1974; Gunnarsson et al., 1998). Deep crustal
metamorphism is one process that always coars-
ens rock. Perhaps Iceland is too young and its
crust too thin to have yet experienced the deep
metamorphism necessary to transform these
granophyres texturally into granites.
Crustal Differentiation
From a crustal-scale heterogeneous collection
of rock units with many different sizes, shapes,
and chemical compositions, a single moderately
large meteorite impact has collected together,
sorted by density, and reprocessed a major slice
of Archean and Early Proterozoic crust. By way
of viscous emulsion differentiation, the impact
process collected all the granitic material at the
top of the melt sheet and all the mafic material
at the bottom. It is easy to see that this process
could be effective in forming continental crust.
Small lenses (sheets 1–2 m thick and 40–50 m
long) of silicic segregations (e.g., plagiogranites
in oceanic crust) are unavoidable products of the
crystallization of basaltic sheets (Marsh, 2002).
But because they are isolated within larger
gabbroic bodies, they can only be collected
into significant granitic bodies by wholesale
reprocessing of the host rock. Although this can
be done on a limited scale through partial melt-
ing driven by magma underplating in the lower
crust, wholesale reprocessing of vast basaltic
terranes, such as Iceland, through meteorite
impact and viscous emulsion differentiation is
clearly the quickest and most efficient means.
During Earth’s heavy bombardment period,
the upper crust was reprocessed many times
over, and sheets of basaltic magma were com-
monplace. There was thus an opportunity to
produce and collect isolated silicic segregations
through impact differentiation. This does not, in
and of itself, produce true continental crust but
furnishes the basic structure and critical materi-
als for equally important cycles of erosion, sedi-
mentation, metamorphism, and partial melting.
Sudbury is only a modest impact structure; other
impacts were much larger and reprocessed ear-
lier melt sheets. Perhaps the Sudbury Igneous
Complex provides the important links between
planetary differentiation, small-scale igneous
processes, and impact dynamics.
Sulfide Deposition
Aside from the impact itself, the enormous
content and distribution of sulfides make Sud-
bury singularly distinctive, and one measure of
the strength and usefulness of any quantitative
dynamic model resides in its interpretive and
predictive capabilities. In this respect, to us, three
aspects of the sulfides touch on the fundamental
processes of sulfide origin and deposition. First,
many of the principal target rocks, including
pelites and rhyolites, have elevated Ni contents
(Golightly, 1994). Second, the massive deposits
associated with the offset dikes strongly suggest
that, at the earliest times (i.e., by the close of the
excavation event), the basal melt sheet contained
large amounts of massive and disseminated sul-
fides. We also take this as evidence of an emul-
sion-like structure in the earliest melt sheet. The
availability of abundant massive sulfides within
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SUDBURY SUPERHEATED IMPACT MELT SHEET

a few minutes of impact strongly implies that
this material must have come, to a large extent,
from original massive sulfide deposits already in
the crust. Subsequent emulsion separation, diffu-
sional exchange among small melt parcels, and
vigorous thermal convection produced a noritic
magma, supersaturated in sulfide, that formed a
disseminated immiscible phase while the magma
was still superheated (e.g., Lightfoot et al., 2001,
and references therein). Third, the topography of
the crater floor, as discussed earlier, pinned the
upwelling limbs of the convection cells over the
embayments. As convection became laminar, the
settling immiscible sulfide droplets were swept
up, concentrated, and suspended by the flow in
these same upwelling sites above the embay-
ments. (The fluid mechanics of this process is
given by Marsh and Maxey [1985] and Marsh
[1988].) As huge amounts of magma flowed past
the suspended droplets, they scavenged Ni and
Cu from the melt (the partition coefficients are
enormous) and grew until they could no longer
be suspended by the flow, producing a steady rain
of sulfides into the embayments. This process,
which is similar to a water purification system,
literally cleansed the norite of base metals. In the
end, as convection waned and the norite solidi-
fication front advanced upward, the remaining
sulfides were disseminated through the lower
parts of the norite. It is also possible that part of
this process also could have persisted as a porous
flow, driven by concentration gradients, within
the evolving solidification front. A secondary
feature of this thermal regime is the occurrence
of complementary hydrothermal flows within
the footwall rocks near the embayments that
may have remobilized and redeposited material
deposited earlier during the emplacement of the
offset dikes.
CONCLUSION
We see at Sudbury the formation of a viscous
magmatic emulsion and its subsequent evolution
as a string of unavoidable physical and chemical
processes triggered by a massive meteorite
impact into continental crust. The envisioned
sequence of distinctive physicochemical events
is depicted by Figure 14. Everything associated
with the impact is a breccia. In small impacts,
little or no melt is produced, but with increasing

Moho

1 hour years years

Onaping Fm.

Plagioclase
Granophyre

3
Density (g/cm )
Granophyre
Granophyre
Transition Zone

N-29
NRD-031

N-
N-27 Norite
31
NRD-015

NRD-009

Transition 2.6 2.8 3.0

Zone

Norite

Footwall ρ, Density
Granitics

years years
Figure 14. Schematic illustrations of the critical stages in the dynamics of evolution leading to the final petrologic structure of the Sudbury
Igneous Complex. The labels at the tops of the panels indicate the depicted processes, and the arrows and times at the bases give the approxi-
mate time scales for these processes.

Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005 1447

 Downloaded from gsabulletin.gsapubs.org on August 27, 2015
impactor size, peak pressure and temperature
surge strongly upward such that a huge amount
of superheated melt is formed. This is accentu-
ated by the great depth of penetration of large
bolides that are able to reach the relatively
easily melted, hot rocks of the lower crust. The
polymict domains of the voluminous surviv-
ing breccias reflect the equivalent condition
prevailing in the impact melt sheet, namely,
a poly-compositional, poly-viscous magma.
Given the exceedingly short time of generation
and emplacement (<5 min), there was no time
for thorough mixing before the melt sheet emul-
sion subdivided under the action of gravity into
two distinct compositional units, reflecting the
essential nature of the target materials. At this
point, sufficient evidence in the field relations
lends credence to almost all aspects of the pro-
posed model.
A prime objective of this work is to present
a detailed integrated magmatic history of the
melt sheet from start to finish. Above all, the
processes outlined are clearly testable against
further quantitative modeling and, especially,
against ongoing field observations. There are a
number of avenues for further research. First,
the detailed compositional and textural rela-
tions, including the sulfides, in the offset dikes
are critical to ascertain. These dikes likely sam-
pled the incipient melt sheet during collapse of
the transient crater some 2–4 min after impact.
Second, a detailed CSD study of the granophyre
may ascertain its spatial pattern of crystalliza-
tion. Third, identification of discrete compo-
sitional domains within the granophyre, cor-
responding to individual blobs of felsic impact
melt (from the emulsion or foundered Onaping)
that survived convective homogenization, will
provide physical evidence of the granophyre
convective history. Fourth, how closely can the
granite blocks and Transition Zone breccia be
positively linked to the Murray granitic pluton
and Onaping Formation? More important,
has any evidence of their transit through the
granophyre or norite solidification fronts been
preserved? Can the evolution of their recrystal-
lization be traced? Fifth, a thorough investiga-
tion of the chemical and physical structure of
the Transition Zone is essential. Because of its
location between the norite and the granophyre,
and its high level of basinwide “ordered hetero-
geneity,” the Transition Zone is likely to provide
important clues about the emulsion and post-
emulsion evolution of the Sudbury melt sheet.
And sixth, the spatial pattern and sizes of sulfide
blebs in the norite will shed light on the process
of sorting and deposition.
The Sudbury Igneous Complex has long been
held to be a magmatic anomaly. Its structure
does not follow from the common, classical
1448 Geological Society of America Bulletin, November/December 2005
ZIEG and MARSH
assumptions for the generation and evolution
of terrestrial magma chambers. By careful
examination of this unique body of magma,
we can gain important insights into the igneous
processes involved in impact-generated melt
sheets. More importantly, however, this com-
plex presents a critical opportunity to reexamine
our assumptions regarding the more common
igneous processes that operate in terrestrially
generated igneous systems. This impact-gener-
ated melt sheet is, in essence, a grand, invalu-
able laboratory experiment with which to evalu-
ate fundamental magmatic processes.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project was ignited and inspired by conversa-
tions with Bevan French. John Fedorowich introduced
us to the field relations and continually saw the poten-
tial of this work. We have benefited from discussions
with Paul Binney, Mike Sweeney, Peter Lightfoot,
Paul Golightly, Walter Peredery, and the participants
in our 1999 Geological Association of Canada–Min-
eralogical Association of Canada (GAC-MAC) field
trip, “Solidification Fronts of the Sudbury Melt Sheet.”
Falconbridge generously provided access to their drill-
core holdings, and John Fedorowich guided us in their
use. The manuscript benefited greatly by insightful
and deeply constructive reviews by Peter Lightfoot,
George Bergantz, and Calvin Miller. We were not
aware of the important paper by Paul Golightly when
we originally formulated the emulsion model. This
research was funded by grants from Falconbridge and
the U.S. National Science Foundation (EAR 9725158;
OPP 9814332), and by field grants from the Stuart
Mossom, David Elliott, and Robert Balk Field Funds
at Johns Hopkins University. This work stemmed
from related work on the magmatic sheets of Ferrar
sills in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica.
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REVISED MANUSCRIPT RECEIVED 5 MAY 2005
MANUSCRIPT ACCEPTED 15 MAY 2005
Printed in the USA
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Geological Society of America Bulletin

The Sudbury Igneous Complex: Viscous emulsion differentiation of a

superheated impact melt sheet
Michael J. Zieg and Bruce D. Marsh

Geological Society of America Bulletin 2005;117, no. 11-12;1427-1450

doi: 10.1130/B25579.1

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