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Widespread mixing and burial of Earth’s Hadean crust by asteroid impacts
Abstract
The history of the Hadean Earth (∼4.0-4.5 billion years ago) is poorly understood because few known rocks are older than ∼3.8 billion years old. The main constraints from this era come from ancient submillimetre zircon grains. Some of these zircons date back to ∼4.4 billion years ago when the Moon, and presumably the Earth, was being pummelled by an enormous flux of extraterrestrial bodies. The magnitude and exact timing of these early terrestrial impacts, and their effects on crustal growth and evolution, are unknown. Here we provide a new bombardment model of the Hadean Earth that has been calibrated using existing lunar and terrestrial data. We find that the surface of the Hadean Earth was widely reprocessed by impacts through mixing and burial by impact-generated melt. This model may explain the age distribution of Hadean zircons and the absence of early terrestrial rocks. Existing oceans would have repeatedly boiled away into steam atmospheres as a result of large collisions as late as about 4 billion years ago.
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“The estimated median age of the last impact big enough to vaporize the entire ocean is ~4.3 Ga ago (22)”
From The Archean atmosphere (2020) · cites this paper as [22]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Marchi, S., Bottke, W. F., Elkins-Tanton, L. T., Bierhaus, M., Wuennemann, K., Morbidelli, A., & Kring, D. A.
- Affiliations
- Southwest Research Institute (US)
- Carnegie Institution for Science (US)
- Museum für Naturkunde (DE)
- Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur (FR)
- Universities Space Research Association (US)
- Corresponding author
- Marchi, S.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2014-07
- Volume
- 511
- Issue
- 7511
- Pages
- 578-582
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W1984569582
- Cited by
- 277
- References
- 77
- Citations by year
- 2026: 18 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 32 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 23 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 17 · 2014: 3
- FWCI
- 13.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Space and Planetary Science › Astro and Planetary Science
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Geochemistry and Petrology › Geological and Geochemical Analysis
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Space and Planetary Science › Planetary Science and Exploration
- Keywords
- Hadean Earth, asteroid impact, impact mixing, impact melt, lunar impact history, crustal growth, terrestrial impact craters
- MeSH terms
- Computer Simulation, Hot Temperature, Models, Theoretical, Earth, Planet, Minor Planets, History, Ancient
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