Hf–Nd isotope evidence for a transient dynamic regime in the early terrestrial mantle

Francis Albarède (), Janne Blichert-Toft, Jeffrey D. Vervoort, James D. Gleason and Minik Rosing
Additional contact information
Francis Albarède: Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon
Janne Blichert-Toft: Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon
Jeffrey D. Vervoort: University of Arizona
James D. Gleason: Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon
Minik Rosing: Geologisk Museum

Nature, 2000, vol. 404, issue 6777, 488-490

Abstract: Abstract Modern basalts have seemingly lost all ‘memory’ of the primitive Earth's mantle except for an ambiguous isotopic signal observed in some rare gases1,2. Although the Earth is expected to have reached a thermal steady state within several hundred million years (refs 3, 4) of accretion, it is not known how and when the initial chemical fractionations left over from planetary accretion (and perhaps a stage involving a magma ocean) were overshadowed by fractionations imposed by modern-style geodynamics. Because of the lack of samples older than 4 Gyr, this early dynamic regime of the Earth is poorly understood. Here we compare published Hf–Nd isotope data on supracrustals from Isua, Greenland, with similar data on lunar rocks and the SNC (martian) meteorites, and show that, about 3.8 Gyr ago, the geochemical signature of the Archaean mantle was partly inherited from the initial differentiation of the Earth. The observed features seem to indicate that the planet at that time was still losing a substantial amount of primordial heat. The survival of remnants from an early layering in the modern deep mantle may account for some unexplained seismological, thermal and geochemical characteristics of the Earth as observed today.

Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35006621 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:404:y:2000:i:6777:d:10.1038_35006621

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35006621

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().