The deepest rocks known from within Earth are fragments of normal mantle (≈400 km) and metamorphosed sediments (≈350 km), both found exhumed in continental collision terranes. Here, we report fragments of a highly reduced deep mantle environment from at least 300 km, perhaps very much more, extracted from chromite of a Tibetan ophiolite. The sample consists, in part, of diamond, coesite-after-stishovite, the high-pressure form of TiO ₂ , native iron, high-pressure nitrides with a deep mantle isotopic signature, and associated SiC. This appears to be a natural example of the recently discovered disproportionation of Fe ²⁺ at very high pressure and consequent low oxygen fugacity (fO ₂ ) in deep Earth. Encapsulation within chromitite enclosed within upwelling solid mantle rock appears to be the only vehicle capable of transporting these phases and preserving their low-fO ₂ environment at the very high temperatures of oceanic spreading centers.

Geologists have “known” for many years that continental crust is buoyant and cannot be subducted very deep. Microdiamonds 10–80 μm in size discovered in the 1980s within metamorphic rocks related to continental collisions clearly refute this statement, suggesting that material of continental crust has been subducted to a minimum depth of >150 km and incorporated into mountain chains during tectonic exhumation. Over the past decade, the rapidly moving technological advancement has made it possible to examine these diamonds in detail, and to learn that they contain nanometric multiphase inclusions of crystalline and fluid phases and are characterized by a “crustal” signature of carbon stable isotopes. Scanning and transmission electron microscopy, focused ion beam techniques, synchrotron infrared spectroscopy, and nano-secondary ion mass spectrometry studies of these diamonds provide evidence that they were crystallized from a supercritical carbon-oxygen-hydrogen fluid. These microdiamonds preserve evidence of the pathway by which carbon and water can be subducted to mantle depths and returned back to the earth's surface.