Geology of Kubi Algi and Derati mountains, pantellerite bodies of Miocene age from the northern part of the Kenyan Rift Valley

Abstract

The small isolated peaks of Kubi Algi and Derati on the periphery of the Koobi Fora basin, to the north-east of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, are remnants of silicic peralkaline volcanic centres. Detailed geological maps of the areas of the two mountains are presented. Both are massive bodies of generally aphyric, microgranular pantellerite sharing similar petrography and chemistry. Kubi Algi shows evidence of having formed as an extrusive dome and is considered the source of local pantellerite lava flows, here designated the Il Burrka Formation. Derati mountain can best be interpreted as a denuded plug of a second extrusive centre. The volcanoes were active in the middle Miocene towards the end of a period of regional magmatism extending from late-Oligocene times. The pantellerites are holocrystalline and thus contrast with the normally glassy over-saturated peralkaline rocks from the East African rifts, including older pyroclastic pantellerites of the northern Lake Turkana region. Despite being very finely crystalline, they show mineralogical features seen elsewhere in more slowly cooled, deep-seated, peralkaline granites. A very broad range of feldspar compositions present in the rocks is explained by the interaction of groundwater with the rapidly cooling magma. Of additional interest is the abundance of aegirine, present as a product of primary magmatic crystallization and, in the Derati rock, as a hydrothermal mineral. It contains significant but highly variable amounts of titanium and zirconium, the latter broadly equivalent to typical maximum concentrations reported from peralkaline intrusive complexes.