The Mantle Rocks

Welcome to Vero Le Roux's Laboratory

The mantle represents more than 80% of the volume of the Earth. It controls the thermal state of the planet, drives plate tectonics, and is the reservoir from which magmas are extracted. Variations in mantle composition and temperature controls the location and dynamics of volcanoes at the surface of our planet. Using petrology, geochemistry, field work, experimental petrology, and 3-D imaging of mantle-derived rocks, we aim to answer fundamental questions about the nature of the Earth’s mantle.

News from the lab

November 2022 – Emman has defended!

Congratulations Dr. Codillo on a very successful Ph.D. defense! On to a prestigious postdoc scholarship at Carnegie now!

Summer Student Fellow (SSF) Program

This year, Postodoctoral investigator Rellie Goddard, Andy Cross, and myself have the pleasure to host undergraduate student Namitha Kumar from the University of Michigan as part of the prestigious SSF program at WHOI. Namitha will work on combining geochemical analyses by LA-ICP-MS and electron microprobe with rheological measurements by EBSD on gabbros from the South…

May 2022 – New Paper in Nature Geoscience: High water content of arc magmas recorded in cumulates from subduction zone lower crust

Magmatic volatiles (for example, water) are abundant in arc melts and exert fundamental controls on magma evolution, eruption dynamics and the formation of economic ore deposits. To constrain the H2O content of arc magmas, most studies have relied on measuring extrusive products and mineral-hosted melt inclusions. However, these methods have inherent limitations that obfuscate the…

Apply to the postdoctoral scholar program or the MIT/WHOI Joint Program (PhD)!

The deadline for application to the WHOI postdoctoral program is Oct. 15th 2021, and the deadline for application to the MIT/WHOI Joint Program (PhD) is December 15th. Contact me if you would like to work in The Mantle Rocks lab. More details on the application process below. Postdoctoral Scholar Program Prospective Students

June 2021 – New Paper in Science Advances: Postmelting hydrogen enrichment in the oceanic lithosphere

The large range of H2O contents recorded in minerals from exhumed mantle rocks has been challenging to interpret, as it often records a combination of melting, metasomatism, and diffusional processes in spatially isolated samples. Here, we determine the temporal variations of H2O contents in pyroxenes from a 24-Ma time series of abyssal peridotites exposed along…

Feb 2021 – Ben’s graduation

Ben Urann has graduated from the MIT/WHOI Joint Program (2015-2021)! Congratulations for a great job Ben!

August 2020: Visiting Scholar at SCIENCE 2020

I have obtained a visiting Scholar award to visit the IGN, University of Copenhagen (Denmark) for some months. Thank you to both WHOI and IGN for support.

March 2020 – New Paper in Geology: Quantifying the volume increase and chemical exchange during serpentinization

Quantifying the concurrent changes in rock volume and fluid composition during serpentinization remains a major challenge in assessing its physicochemical effects during continental rifting, seafloor spreading, and subduction. Here we conducted a series of 11 hydrothermal laboratory experiments where cylindrical cores of natural dunite, harzburgite, and pyroxenite were reacted with an aqueous solution at 300…

March 2020 – New paper in American Mineralogist: The distribution and abundances of halogens in subducted eclogites

Ben Urann (PhD student in Le Roux’s group) just published his work on halogen cycling in subduction zones! We present in situ secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and electron microprobe analyses of coexisting garnet, omphacite, phengite, amphibole, and apatite, combined with pyrohydrolysis bulk-rock analyses to constrain the distribution, abundance, and behavior of halogens (F and…