MINERO-PETROLOGIC INVESTIGATION OF BONINITES FROM CYPRUS ISLAND AS POTENTIAL ANALOGUES OF MERCURY LAVAS

Despite the clearly different conditions during their formation, in terms of oxygen fugacity and water contribution, terrestrial boninites and komatiites are considered good candidates as analogues of Mercury lavas on the basis of MESSENGER Mission XRS and GRS measurements on Mercury’s surface [1 and references there-in]. The aim of this work is to make a comparison between terrestrial boninites and Mercury lavas taking into account geochemical and petrological features pertaining to these rocks, as well as their mineralogy. In fact, the mineralogical characterization of potential analogous materials could be used in the future for comparison with the mineralogical information expected from SIMBIO-SYS and MERTIS instruments on board of the BepiColombo mission [2]. So far, we investigated the mineralogy and petrology of some boninites samples from the Troodos Ophiolite (Cyprus).