Reply to Comment on "ultra-high pressure and ultra-reduced minerals in ophiolites may form by lightning strikes" by Griffin et al., 2018: No evidence for transition zone metamorphism in the Luobusa ophiolite

Griffin et al. (2018) discard our lightning experiments because we did not identify ultra-high pressure (UHP) phases. Our experiments (Ballhaus et al., 2017) provide the first rational explanation of many unusual findings in the so-called UHP ophiolites and hence undermine the foundations on which the resulting speculative geotectonic scenarios are based. Little room seems left to postulate that ultramafic rocks along the Jarlung-Zangbo suture zone have seen Transition Zone (TZ) pressures (McGowan et al., 2015; Griffin et al., 2016a); that chromite crystallised as high pressure polymorph in the calcium ferrite (CF) structure (Xiong et al., 2015); or that the upper mantle is super-reduced (Griffin et al., 2016b).