Tracing the HIMU component within Pan-African lithosphere beneath northeast Africa: Evidence from Late Cretaceous Natash alkaline volcanics, Egypt

A large late Cretaceous (similar to 90 Ma) volcanic field (the Natash volcanic province) crops out in southeast Egypt at the northwestern boundary of the Arabian-Nubian shield. The lavas are mainly of alkaline affinity and exhibit a continuous compositional range from alkali olivine basalt (AOB) to trachyte and rhyolite. All basaltic lavas in the province record various extents of fractional crystallization of olivine, clinopyroxene, plagioclase and spinel. The basaltic lavas show variations in Sr-Nd-Pb-Hf isotopic ratios [(Sr-87/Sr-86)(i) = 0.7030-0.70286; (Nd-143/Nd-144)(i) = 0.512653-0.512761; ((20)6Pb/Pb-204)(i) = 19.28-19.94; (Hf-177-Hf-176)(i) = 0.28274-0.28285], that correlate markedly with the major and trace element ratios and abundances. Assimilation of crustal material cannot explain these correlations, and we invoke instead melting of a multicomponent mantle source. We infer the existence of High-mu (HIMU), Enriched mantle type-I (EM-I) and Depleted mantle (DM) domains in the melting source, with a predominant contribution from the HIMU-type. We suggests further that the basaltic lavas originate from low degrees of partial melting (F < 5%) at moderate potential temperatures (T-p) 1391-1425 degrees C and pressures of 2.0-2.6 GPa. The melting pressure estimations imply that melting entirely occurred within lithospheric mantle, most likely in the presence of residual amphibole as presence negative K-anomalies in the primitive mantle-normalized patterns of the fractionation-corrected melts. The presence of amphibole within the lithosphere is a strong evidence that the lithospheric mantle underwent metasomatic enrichment prior to melting in Late Cretaceous. This metasomatic event affected on the Pb isotopic compositions of the Natash volcanics by adding Th and U to the melting source. Time-integrated calculations to remove the decoupling between Pb-206 and Pb-207 isotopes that most probably resulted from the metasomatic event indicate a tentative link between