岩石大地构造学说的兴起, 没落与新生

The rock assemblages formed in modern plate tectonic environments are called petrotectonic assemblages. Founded in the 1970s and 1980s, the theory has undergone a complicated process of rise, fall and reborn. This research showed that the theory of petrotectonics established by Pearce and other scholars is basically correct. In a word, the source areas of magmas in the three kind of tectonic settings including the mid-ocean ridge, oceanic island and island arc are substantially different. Indeed, the heterogeneity of the sources in the three tectonic settings may be much complex than previously thought of. Due to the complexity of source areas in the different tectonic settings and the fact that the diverse sampling protocols, regions, and accuracy of the data, the massive accumulation of global data may not suitable for basalt discrimination. Our study revealed that rocks as well as minerals within them (including basalt, picrite, gabbro, cumulate rocks, olivine, monoclinic pyroxene, spinel, etc.) may bear the "genes" of their tectonic settings, and big data method can be used to identify most of them. This may be a rebirth of the petrotectonic theory. Although specific "genes" for igneous rocks of different tectonic settings await further investigation, big data method can significantly improve the validity of geochemical discrimination. In addition, the theoretical explanation of the above gene hypothesis is still inadequate, and needs further investigation.