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Emergence of silicic continents as the lower crust peels off on a hot plate-tectonic Earth

Nature Geoscience volume 10, pages 698–703 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

The rock record and geochemical evidence indicate that continental recycling has been occurring since the early history of the Earth. The stabilization of felsic continents in place of Earth’s early mafic crust about 3.0 to 2.0 billion years ago, perhaps due to the initiation of plate tectonics, implies widespread destruction of mafic crust during this time interval. However, the physical mechanisms of such intense recycling on a hotter, (late) Archaean and presumably plate-tectonic Earth remain largely unknown. Here we use thermomechanical modelling to show that extensive recycling via lower crustal peeling-off (delamination but not eclogitic dripping) during continent–continent convergence was near ubiquitous during the late Archaean to early Proterozoic. We propose that such destruction of the early mafic crust, together with felsic magmatism, may have caused both the emergence of silicic continents and their subsequent isostatic rise, possibly above the sea level. Such changes in the continental character have been proposed to influence the Great Oxidation Event and, therefore, peeling-off plate tectonics could be the geodynamic trigger for this event. A transition to the slab break-off controlled syn-orogenic recycling occurred as the Earth aged and cooled, leading to reduced recycling and enhanced preservation of the continental crust of present-day composition.

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Figure 1: Dynamics of slab break-off controlled continental recycling under present-day mantle Tp of 1,275 °C (model pcff).
Figure 2: Dynamics of peeling-off controlled continental recycling under higher mantle Tp of 1,475 °C (model pprc).
Figure 3: Effect of LCC eclogitization and mantle Tp on recycling magnitude.
Figure 4: Changing orogenic-recycling dynamics with the age of Earth.

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Acknowledgements

P.C. is funded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (Funding ID-57076385) and operating grants from Ruhr-Universität Bochum. T.G. received support from the ERC ITN projects SUBITOP (604713) and ZIP (674899) as well as from SNF projects Swiss-AlpArray (CRSII2_154434) and number 200020_166063. S.C. is funded by operating grants from Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Simulations were performed on the ETH-Zurich Brutus and Euler clusters.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Institut für Geologie, Mineralogie & Geophysik, Univertsitätsstrasse 150, 44801, Bochum, Germany

    Priyadarshi Chowdhury & Sumit Chakraborty

  2. Department of Earth Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Sonneggstrasse 5, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland

    Taras Gerya

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  1. Priyadarshi Chowdhury
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Contributions

S.C. and T.G. conceived the study. P.C. designed the study together with S.C. and T.G. P.C. conducted the numerical experiments, interpreted the results and formulated the MATLAB codes for calculating recycled volumes and post processing the numerical results. T.G. designed the 2D-thermomechanical code. All authors discussed the results, problems and methods, interpretation of the results, and participated in writing the paper.

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Correspondence to Priyadarshi Chowdhury.

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Chowdhury, P., Gerya, T. & Chakraborty, S. Emergence of silicic continents as the lower crust peels off on a hot plate-tectonic Earth. Nature Geosci 10, 698–703 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo3010

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