New Mayotte Volcano Lava Shows Higher Neodymium-142 Ratio Than Older Eruptions

Lava erupted from the submarine volcano Fani Maoré contains a higher ratio of neodymium-142 to neodymium-144 than lava from the older Mayotte volcanic system, according to measurements reported by NewScientist. The elevated ratio is interpreted as evidence of a mantle pocket enriched in bridgmanite that crystallized from Earth's primordial magma ocean.

Fani Maoré was discovered about 50 km east of Mayotte after an earthquake swarm began in May 2018.

Eruptions between 2018 and 2021 caused the island to subside by roughly 20 cm. Rock samples were recovered during the 2019 MAYOBS2 campaign and compared with material from the older system. Catherine Chauvel of the French National Centre for Scientific Research led the comparison.

Her team worked with Claudine Israel of the University of Cambridge, who developed the ultra-precise technique used to measure the neodymium isotope ratios. The higher ratio in Fani Maoré lava points to a reservoir that escaped billions of years of mantle mixing.

"This is going to change a lot of things in earth science, because now we have proof that materials dating back 4.5 billion years still exist in sufficient quantities to be sampled in a volcano," Chauvel said.

Israel added that the data show how the mantle crystallized from the magma ocean and created chemical heterogeneity from the start. The findings indicate that Earth's mantle preserves chemically heterogeneous material from the Hadean eon. The study was published in Nature with DOI 10.1038/s41586-026-10719-w.

Additional researchers from Curtin University, CNRS Lyon, and Carnegie Science contributed to the analysis.