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Earth's oldest stable crust in the Pilbara Craton formed by cyclic gravitational overturns

Nature Geoscience volume 11, pages 357–361 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

During the early Archaean, the Earth was too hot to sustain rigid lithospheric plates subject to Wilson Cycle-style plate tectonics. Yet by that time, up to 50% of the present-day continental crust was generated. Preserved continental fragments from the early Archaean have distinct granite-dome/greenstone-keel crust that is interpreted to be the result of a gravitationally unstable stratification of felsic proto-crust overlain by denser mafic volcanic rocks, subject to reorganization by Rayleigh–Taylor flow. Here we provide age constraints on the duration of gravitational overturn in the East Pilbara Terrane. Our U–Pb ages indicate the emplacement of ~3,600–3,460-million-year-old granitoid rocks, and their uplift during an overturn event ceasing about 3,413 million years ago. Exhumation and erosion of this felsic proto-crust accompanied crustal reorganization. Petrology and thermodynamic modelling suggest that the early felsic magmas were derived from the base of thick (~43 km) basaltic proto-crust. Combining our data with regional geochronological studies unveils characteristic growth cycles on the order of 100 million years. We propose that maturation of the early crust over three of these cycles was required before a stable, differentiated continent emerged with sufficient rigidity for plate-like behaviour.

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Fig. 1: Histogram of the isotope ages from the Muccan Granitic Complex dome and surrounding greenstone belts.
Fig. 2: P–T diagram for felsic proto-crust formation and emplacement, and its exhumation during the first RTI.
Fig. 3: Synoptic timeline and model illustration for early Archaean proto-crust formation and stabilization over ~100 Myr growth cycles.

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Acknowledgements

The Geological Survey of Western Australia supported fieldwork logistics. Analytics were carried out at the Central Analytical Research Facility (CARF), Institute for Future Environments, Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Staff of the CARF assisted sample preparation. K.H. Moromizato assisted LA-ICP-MS analyses. The findings of this study are based on a PhD thesis by D.W. (QUT). Titanite geochronological data are from an MSc thesis by L.W. (QUT).

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  1. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Daniel Wiemer, Christoph E. Schrank, David T. Murphy, Lana Wenham & Charlotte M. Allen

  2. University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia

    Daniel Wiemer & Christoph E. Schrank

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Contributions

D.W., C.E.S. and D.T.M conducted field work and came up with the idea of the paper. D.T.M conceived the project. D.W. wrote the manuscript draft of the paper and drafted the figures. All authors contributed to discussions and writing of the final paper. D.W., C.M.A. and L.W. generated and evaluated geochronological data. D.W. and D.T.M. evaluated geochemical data. D.W. performed thermodynamic calculations.

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Correspondence to Daniel Wiemer.

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Supplementary Table 1

Zircon U–Pb data

Supplementary Table 2

Titanite U–Pb data

Supplementary Table 3

Rock geochemical data

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Wiemer, D., Schrank, C.E., Murphy, D.T. et al. Earth's oldest stable crust in the Pilbara Craton formed by cyclic gravitational overturns. Nature Geosci 11, 357–361 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0105-9

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