Hadean diamonds in zircon from Jack Hills, Western Australia

Martina Menneken (), Alexander A. Nemchin, Thorsten Geisler (), Robert T. Pidgeon and Simon A. Wilde
Additional contact information
Martina Menneken: Institut für Mineralogie, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Corrensstr. 24, 48149 Münster, Germany
Alexander A. Nemchin: Western Australian School of Mines, Curtin University of Technology, Bentley, Western Australia 6102, Australia
Thorsten Geisler: Institut für Mineralogie, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Corrensstr. 24, 48149 Münster, Germany
Robert T. Pidgeon: Western Australian School of Mines, Curtin University of Technology, Bentley, Western Australia 6102, Australia
Simon A. Wilde: Western Australian School of Mines, Curtin University of Technology, Bentley, Western Australia 6102, Australia

Nature, 2007, vol. 448, issue 7156, 917-920

Abstract: Calibrating 'forever'? Detrital zircons older than 4,000 million years from the Jack Hills, Western Australia are the oldest identified fragments of the Earth's crust, and are unique in preserving information on the earliest evolution of the Earth. Now micro-diamond inclusions have been discovered in Jack Hills zircon up to 4,252 million years old, including the oldest known diamonds found in terrestrial rocks. The spread of ages indicates that either conditions required for diamond formation were repeated several times during early Earth history, or that there was significant recycling of ancient diamond. Unless conditions on the early Earth were unique, the findings imply a relatively thick continental lithosphere and crust–mantle interaction at least 4,250 million years ago.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06083 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:448:y:2007:i:7156:d:10.1038_nature06083

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

DOI: 10.1038/nature06083

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 ().