The Rock Record Has It About Right—No Significant Continental Crust Formation Prior to 3.8 Ga

Abstract:

Although limited in its exposed extent and by its quality of preservation, the geologic record through the first two billion years of Earth’s history provides surprisingly tight constraints on the growth and evolution of continental crust. The magmatic zircon record for this period is dominated by Neoarchean U-Pb ages, with greatly diminishing abundance of older rocks and no known zircon bearing rocks much older than 4.0 Ga. A similar pattern exists for the ages of detrital zircons but with important addition of zircons as old as 4.4 Ga, mostly from the Jack Hills metaconglomerate. It has been suggested that this represents an artefact of preservation rather than the actual production rate of older crust, with the implication that large volumes of older crust have been destroyed by various recycling processes. This undoubtedly has happened to some extent, but there is considerable uncertainty as to how much has been destroyed and the nature of the early-formed crust. Here is where the long-lived radiogenic isotopic record, particularly Lu-Hf, can provide important information on the sources of the zircons by integrating age and tracer isotopic information in not only the same sample or zircon but even in the same domain of zircon. Using the most robust data from zircon and whole rock samples, excluding those with unconstrained ages and mixed-domain analyses, the most radiogenic Hf isotope compositions are characterized by ~ chondritic Hf isotopic compositions from 4.4 to ~ 3.8 Ga and a nearly linear evolution trend from epsilon Hf of 0 at 3.8 Ga to ~ epsilon Hf of +16 at present. There remains no evidence from the Hf isotope record for widespread mantle depletion prior to 3.8 Ga. Excluding the Jack Hills zircons, there is a conspicuous lack of pre 3.9 Ga zircons in even the oldest sediments¹. This indicates that crust prior to 3.8 Ga was likely small in volume and/or effectively recycled back into the mantle on short time scales and did not result in significant depletion of the mantle. The onset of widespread mantle depletion at ~ 3.8 Ga likely coincided with the formation of stable continental crust (and cratons).

[1]Nutman et al (2001). Precambrian Res, 105, 93-114.