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

Nature volume 404, pages 488–490 (2000)Cite this article

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.

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Figure 1: Geochemical screening of the altered Isua metavolcanic samples.
Figure 2: Evidence for strong chemical fractionation in the early Archaean mantle.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Goldstein and W. White for comments on the manuscript, and F. Begemann for pointing out the re-determination of the 176Lu half-life. This work was supported by the Danish Lithosphere Centre, the Carlsberg Foundation, the Danish National Research Fund, the Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers (Programme Cycles Géochimiques), and the Programme National de Planétologie.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 46 Allée d'Italie, Lyon, 69364 cedex 7, France

    Francis Albarède, Janne Blichert-Toft & James D. Gleason

  2. University of Arizona, Tucson, 85721, Arizona, USA

    Jeffrey D. Vervoort

  3. Geologisk Museum, Øster Voldgade 5-7, Copenhagen K, 1350, Denmark

    Minik Rosing

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  1. Francis Albarède
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  2. Janne Blichert-Toft
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Correspondence to Francis Albarède.

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Albarède, F., Blichert-Toft, J., Vervoort, J. et al. Hf–Nd isotope evidence for a transient dynamic regime in the early terrestrial mantle. Nature 404, 488–490 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35006621

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