Temperature, size, and depth of the magma reservoir for the Taylor Creek Rhyolite, New Mexico

The 55 km3 mid-Tertiary Taylor Creek Rhyolite in southwestern New Mexico consists of 20 lava domes and flows. This rhyolite is metaluminous to weakly peraluminous. Compositional zonation in feldspar phenocrysts is very minor and nonsystematic. The compositions of each feldspar species vary little throughout the suite of analyzed samples. This chemical homogeneity of phenocrysts reflects similar whole-rock homogeneity and suggests that the lavas were tapped from a single large reservoir of magma. Ages of sanidine phenocrysts determined using 40Ar/39Ar indicate that the Taylor Creek Rhyolite lavas were emplaced during a period of less than 0.42 my. and possibly less than 0.13 m.y., which is consistent with the single-reservoir scenario. Two-feldspar geothermometry suggests that Taylor Creek Rhyolite phenocrysts crystallized at about 775??C, at an assumed pressure of 2 kbar. Fe-Ti-oxide geothermometry suggests phenocryst growth at about 800??C. Experimental studies suggest that quartz and potassium-feldspar crystals that grow from H2O-undersaturated granitic magmas should exhibit resorption texture, a texture ubiquitous to Taylor Creek Rhyolite quartz and sanidine phenocrysts. We tentatively conclude that the Taylor Creek Rhyolite magma was H2O undersaturated and subliquidus at an unspecified pressure greater than 0.5 kbar during phenocryst growth and that Taylor Creek Rhyolite pyroclastic deposits formed because volatile saturation developed during the ascent of magma to sites of eruption. -from Authors