Meteoritics articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • Article |

    Fine silicate dust generated by the Chicxulub impact had a dominant role in the global cooling and disruption of photosynthesis that followed, according to palaeoclimate simulations constrained by grain-size analysis of Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary sediments.

    • Cem Berk Senel
    • , Pim Kaskes
    •  & Özgür Karatekin

  • Review Article |

    A review of aqueous phosphorus availability on the Earth’s early surface suggests a range of phosphorus sources supplied the prebiotic Earth, but that phosphorus availability declined as life evolved and altered geochemical cycling.

    • Craig R. Walton
    • , Sophia Ewens
    •  & Matthew A. Pasek

  • All Minerals Considered |

    Following on from insights gleaned from iron meteorites, Claire Nichols explains why tetrataenite, with its unique magnetic properties, could be key for future renewable energy technologies.

    • Claire I. O. Nichols

  • Research Briefing |

    Seismometers on the NASA InSight lander have identified unusual signals from meteoroid impacts on Mars. Impact locations were confirmed by satellite images of new craters at these sites and directly constrain the martian interior, confirming its crustal structure and ground-truthing the scaling of impact-induced seismicity.

  • Article |

    Geochemical analyses of an andesitic meteorite suggest the continental-crust-like composition is due to partial melting after core formation on a differentiated parent body.

    • Robert W. Nicklas
    • , James M. D. Day
    •  & Arya Udry

  • News & Views |

    Whether Earth’s water was delivered early or late in its formation is debated. The composition of Venus’s atmosphere may indicate that late accretion, the final stage of planet formation, delivered little water to the terrestrial planets.

    • Ramon Brasser

  • Article |

    Mars’s mantle is chemically heterogeneous and contains multiple primordial water reservoirs, according to an analysis of the hydrogen isotopic composition of minerals in Martian meteorites.

    • Jessica J. Barnes
    • , Francis M. McCubbin
    •  & Carl B. Agee

  • News & Views |

    Earth’s formation by the accretion of volatile-rich carbonaceous chondrite-like materials, without a need for exotic building blocks or secondary volatile loss, is supported by recognition of a plateau pattern for highly volatile elements.

    • Zaicong Wang

  • Article |

    Mesosiderite meteorites may originate from a hit-and-run impact on the parent asteroid of eucrite meteorites (probably Vesta), as mesosiderite zircon U–Pb ages are found to coincide with those for eucrites.

    • Makiko K. Haba
    • , Jörn-Frederik Wotzlaw
    •  & Maria Schönbächler

  • Article |

    Earth’s oldest known felsic rocks formed by partial melting at low pressures and high temperatures caused by impact melting of mafic Hadean crust, according to phase equilibria and trace element modelling.

    • Tim E. Johnson
    • , Nicholas J. Gardiner
    •  & Hugh Smithies

  • Article |

    Niobium may be sequestered into the cores of some asteroids rather than remaining in their mantles according to measurements of meteorites and partitioning experiments. Accretion of such asteroids may explain why Earth’s mantle is depleted in niobium.

    • Carsten Münker
    • , Raúl O. C. Fonseca
    •  & Toni Schulz

  • Article |

    Collisions of dust particles with a planet’s atmosphere lead to the accumulation of metallic atoms at high altitudes. MAVEN spacecraft observations reveal a persistent—but temporally variable—metal layer of Mg+ ions in the Martian atmosphere.

    • M. M. J. Crismani
    • , N. M. Schneider
    •  & B. M. Jakosky

  • News & Views |

    Variability of iron isotopes among planetary bodies may reflect their accretion or differentiation histories. Experiments suggest nickel may be the ingredient controlling iron isotope signatures, supporting fractionation during core formation.

    • Paolo A. Sossi

  • Letter |

    The Moon has a tenuous exosphere and dust-sized particles have been detected. Analysis of spectral observations by the LADEE spacecraft suggests that the Moon also has a spatially and temporally variable exosphere of nanodust particles.

    • D. H. Wooden
    • , A. M. Cook
    •  & M. Shirley

  • Letter |

    Mercury’s surface is darker than expected given its low iron content. The delivery of cometary carbon to Mercury in micrometeorite impacts may explain the planet’s globally low reflectance.

    • Megan Bruck Syal
    • , Peter H. Schultz
    •  & Miriam A. Riner

  • Letter |

    Following the Chicxulub impact, many foraminifera in near-surface waters perished, but bottom-dwelling species survived. Impact experiments suggest that sulphate in Chicxulubs target rocks was released as predominantly sulphur trioxide, which would have been converted to sulphuric acid in the atmosphere and swept down swiftly by larger particles, acidifying the ocean surface.

    • Sohsuke Ohno
    • , Toshihiko Kadono
    •  & Seiji Sugita

  • Editorial |

    The Chelyabinsk fireball highlighted the threat of asteroids and comets. But actually, for life on Earth, impacts may have once played the role of hero.

  • Letter |

    The pressures and temperatures experienced by material flung from craters following impact events are expected to preclude survival of organics. The preservation of biomarkers in impact glass from the Darwin crater in Tasmania suggests that organic matter can survive in the distal products of meteorite impact.

    • Kieren Torres Howard
    • , Melanie J. Bailey
    •  & Sasha Verchovsky

  • Letter |

    Earth’s crust formed from melted mantle, yet the earliest record of this process is recorded only in crustal rocks. Isotopic dating of mantle rocks in the Ujaragssuit Nunât intrusion, southwest Greenland, identify melting events that occurred up to 4.36 Gyr ago, providing a mantle record of ancient melting to complement the crustal record.

    • Judith A. Coggon
    • , Ambre Luguet
    •  & Peter W. U. Appel

  • Article |

    Lunar samples suggest that the inner Solar System was bombarded by asteroids about 4 Gyr ago. Radiometric ages of meteorites suggest an unusual number of high-velocity asteroids at this time, consistent with a dynamical origin of the bombardment in which the asteroids were pushed by outer planet migration onto highly eccentric orbits.

    • S. Marchi
    • , W. F. Bottke
    •  & C. T. Russell

  • Research Highlights |

    • Tamara Goldin

  • News & Views |

    Iron-loving elements are thought to have been added to Mars, Earth and the Moon after core formation. An analysis of meteorites formed in the first two to three million years of Solar System history suggests that a similar late veneer was added elsewhere too.

    • James Brenan

  • Letter |

    The mantles of the terrestrial planets contain elemental abundances that suggest accretion continued at a late stage, after core formation. Geochemical data of meteorites from differentiated asteroids are consistent with such a late accretion event, suggesting that the phenomenon occurred throughout the Solar System and was related to planet formation.

    • James M. D. Day
    • , Richard J. Walker
    •  & Douglas Rumble III

  • News & Views |

    Chondritic meteorites are remnants of the ancient Solar System. Analysis of the dust rims often found on their constituent particles shows that the rims were swept up while the particles wafted about and collided in a weakly turbulent protoplanetary nebula.

    • Jeff Cuzzi

  • Letter |

    Rock fabrics record the formation, compaction and deformation history of that rock. High-resolution mapping of tiny grains in the Allende CV meteorite reveals preservation of a spherical fabric that may have formed in the solar nebula, and could be the oldest rock fabric to have formed in the Solar System.

    • Philip A. Bland
    • , Lauren E. Howard
    •  & Kathryn A. Dyl

  • Letter |

    The origins of the non-mass-dependent oxygen isotope anomaly in planetary materials remain controversial. An analysis of the carbon and oxygen isotopes of organic matter from a carbonaceous chondrite suggests that the signature was acquired in the envelope of the protosolar nebula, triggered by the photodissociation of carbon monoxide.

    • Ko Hashizume
    • , Naoto Takahata
    •  & Yuji Sano

  • Letter |

    Mars may have once had a CO2-rich atmosphere, but carbonate rocks that could provide evidence for such conditions are sparse. Spectral analyses of rocks exposed from deep within an impact crater reveal that carbonate deposits may be extensive on Mars, but are buried under layers of younger volcanic rocks.

    • Joseph R. Michalski
    •  & Paul B. Niles

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