Western Newark Basin text file

WESTERN NEWARK BASIN, PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY
One hundred twenty-three (123) samples of diabase from fifteen (15) sheets and three (3) dikes were collected by four (4) workers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and analyzed by the U.S. Geological Survey. Johnathan Husch and others provided thirty (30) samples from seven (7) sheets and one (1) dike for which partial chemistry is here provided, the balance of the chemistry being available in Husch and others (1984), Husch and Schwimmer (1985), and Husch (1988). Two (2) dike samples in New Jersey were provided by Ronald A. Parker of the U.S.G.S. for which major element chemistry only is available. R.C. Smith, II, of the Pennsylvania Geological Survey, provided nineteen (19) samples from the Warwick core hole through the Morgantown diabase sheet; the balance of the hemistry is documented in Smith (1973). Seventy-two (72) whole rock samp~es from eight (8) diabase sheets in Pennsylvania were collected by Froelich and Gottfried, and complete chemistry is documented here.

The palladium (Pd) and platinum (Pt) abundances and ratios in the chilled margins of the many sheets and dikes are typical of those in the high Ti, quartz normative magmas throughout the province. Platinum contents are consistently greater than palladium in the orthopyroxene cumulate zones, and Pd is greater than Pt in the late-stage differentiates. No significant zones or areas of enrichment were discovered in sampling the diabase sheets of the Western Newark basin; however, many areas of thick evolved ferrogabbro, ferrodiorite, and granophyric differentiates are present that were not sampled.

References
Husch, J.M., Sturgis, D.S., and Bambrick, T.C., 1984, Mesozoic diabases from west-central New Jersey: Major and trace element geochemistry of whole rock samples: Northeastern Geology, v. 6, p. 51-63.

Husch, J.M., and Schwimmer, R., 1985, Major and trace element concentration across a Mesozoic basaltic dike, New Hope, Pennsylvania: Northeastern Geology, v. 7, p. 144-160.

Husch, J.M., 1988, Significance of major- and trace-element variation trends in Mesozoic diabase, west-central New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, in Froelich, A.J., and Robinson, G.R., Jr., eds., Studies of the early Mesozoic basins of the Eastern United States: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1776, p. 141-150.

Smith, R.C., 11, 1973, Geochemistry of Triassic diabase from southeastern Pennsylvania: unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, 262 p.