Short-Lived Chemical Heterogeneities in the Archean Mantle with Implications for Mantle Convection
Abstract
The neodymium isotope and samarium-neodymium systematics of 2.7-billion-year-old mantle-derived magmas indicate that the lifetime of chemical heterogeneities was much shorter in the Archean mantle than in the modern mantle. Isotopic evidence is compatible with a Rayleigh number 100 times larger and convection 10 times faster in the Late Archean compared with the present-day mantle. Modern plate tectonics thus may be an improbable analog for the Archean. Chemical heterogeneities in the mantle may originate upon magma migration and mineralogical phase changes rather than by recycling of oceanic and continental crust.
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Published In
Science
Volume 263 | Issue 5153
18 March 1994
18 March 1994
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1994 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 8 November 1993
Accepted: 31 January 1994
Published in print: 18 March 1994
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- The Earth's Early Evolution, Science, 269, 5230, (1535-1540), (1995)./doi/10.1126/science.7667634
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