Generation of Earth's early continents from a relatively cool Archean mantle

2019

This research has been supported by DFG grant, SPP 1833 Building a Habitable Earth and MAGMA Consolidator Grant (ERC project #71143). Several lines of evidence suggest that the Archean (4.0 2.5 Ga) mantle was hotter than today's potential temperature (TP) of  1350 ° C. However, the magnitude of such difference is poorly constrained, with TP estimation spanning from 1500 ° C to 1600 ° C during the Meso‐Archean (3.2‐2.8 Ga). Such differences have major implications for the interpreted mechanisms of continental crust generation on the early Earth, as their efficacy is highly sensitive to the TP. Here, we integrate petrological modeling with thermomechanical simulations to understand the dynami…