Nicoli & Matthews, Lithos 348 105194 (2019), doi: 10.1016/j.lithos.2019.105194

The Little Minch Sill Complex on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, is part of the British Tertiary Igneous Province and represents part of an extensive magmatic plumbing system. Decades of work has constrained the petrogenetic histories of the sills extremely well, and has allowed us to form a picture of how the crystal cargoes and their melts are related.

In this article we use this excellent petrological foundation to explore how the crystal and magma chemistry betrays the pressures and temperatures at which the magmas derived, and the conditions in which the sills were in intruded. Examining fossilised magmatic plumbing systems is important for developing an understanding of present day magmatic systems. In particular, we can begin to understand the paths magmas take on their way to the surface, and what makes some magmas more likely to erupt than others.

Image is Figure 8 from the manuscript. Bar 4 are the estimates derived in this study, all others are comparisons from the literature. See manuscript for citations.