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Early martian mantle overturn inferred from isotopic composition of nakhlite meteorites

Nature Geoscience volume 2, pages 548–552 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

The early stages of planetary differentiation are characterized by the formation of magma oceans, which crystallize from the base up1,2. The final, iron-rich residues of crystallization are dense and therefore tend to sink into the mantle, whereas the deeper, magnesium-rich material tends to rise up3,4. The resultant mantle overturn would have had a profound influence on the evolution of the planets3,4,5,6. Such an event probably occurred on Mars, but its initiation, timing and geochemical consequences are poorly constrained. Here we use isotopic data for nakhlite meteorites—chunks of martian crust transported to the Earth—and numerical simulations to constrain the evolution of the early martian mantle. We interpret the isotopic composition of the meteorites as evidence for an episode that occurred relatively early in Mar’s history, about 100 million years after the planet’s formation, during which garnet was removed from material that rose up from the deep mantle. This episode implies large-scale reorganization in the martian mantle and thereby provides compelling support for overturn. We suggest that this event probably led to substantial re-melting in the deepest mantle, which may have influenced early martian processes such as the development of crustal dichotomy.

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Figure 1: Effect of the mantle overturn on the ɛ values in the source of nakhlites.
Figure 2: Schematic model representing the early evolution of Mars.
Figure 3: Evolution of the depletion field during overturn event.

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Acknowledgements

This work was carried out under a postdoctoral fellowship grant to V.D. at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, a NASA Cosmochemistry grant to A.D.B. (RTOP 344-31-72-06) and a NASA Cosmochemistry grant (NNX08AG57G) and Origins of Solar Systems grant (NNX09AC93G) to Q.-Z.Y. at UC Davis. We thank NIPR and the NASA Antarctic Meteorite Collection for providing samples for this study. A. Agranier, Y. Reese and C.-Y. Shih are thanked for their analytical support, and the Belgian Fonds National pour la Recherche Scientifique (FRS-FNRS) for present support to V.D. C.O’N. acknowledges ARC support. This is a UCD-ICP-MS contribution number no. 0023 and GEMOC no. 597.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DSTE, Université Libre de Bruxelles, CP 160/02, 50 Avenue F. D. Roosevelt, 1050 Brussels, Belgium

    V. Debaille

  2. Lunar and Planetary Institute, 3600 Bay Area, Houston, Texas 77058, USA

    V. Debaille

  3. NASA-Johnson Space Center, Mail Code KR, Houston, Texas 77058, USA

    A. D. Brandon

  4. GEMOC ARC National Key Centre, Macquarie University, New South Wales, Australia

    C. O’Neill

  5. Department of Geology, University of California Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, California 95616, USA

    Q.-Z. Yin & B. Jacobsen

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  1. V. Debaille
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  4. Q.-Z. Yin
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All authors contributed extensively to the work presented in this paper.

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Correspondence to V. Debaille.

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Debaille, V., Brandon, A., O’Neill, C. et al. Early martian mantle overturn inferred from isotopic composition of nakhlite meteorites. Nature Geosci 2, 548–552 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo579

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