|
1 Department of Geological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7700, South Africa
2 Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, McGill University, 3450, University Street, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2A7, Canada
New continental crust forms above subduction zones through the recycling of hydrated oceanic lithosphere. The most efficient process known for oceanic lithosphere hydration takes place at the submerged mid-ocean ridges where the lithosphere is young and warm, and cools through hydrothermal convection. Such mid-ocean ridge hydrothermal interactions were operative at least as far back as 3.5–3.8 Ga. The apparent absence of preserved continental crust older than 4.0 Ga may reflect the absence of hydrothermal interaction before that time. This model requires that prior to about 4.0 Ga mid-ocean ridges stood above sea level. Our calculations show, however, that on a plate-tectonic early Earth with substantially less continent, realistic higher heat flow, and a volume of sea water similar to that of today’s ocean, Archaean mid-ocean ridges would have remained below sea level. Only with a substantial reduction of surface water would Earth have been able to recycle dry oceanic lithosphere, and thus prevent the present day style of continental crust formation.
A 30% reduction of surface water is required to elevate early Earth’s ridges above sea level. This excess water may have been stored in nominally anhydrous minerals of the mantle. Early Earth’s mantle may have released a significant proportion of its initial water only gradually through convective overturn of the oceanic floor. Given realistic ocean-floor creation rates, it would have taken roughly 500 Ma to process the early Earth’s mantle through a MORB generation event if only the upper mantle was involved and considerably longer if whole mantle convection was involved. The inefficiency of water extraction during this process is illustrated by the amount of water apparently present in the source regions for present-day MORB. In this scenario, the Hadean-Archaean transition may mark the time when Earth changed its style of cooling from one dominated by heat exchange directly to the atmosphere to one dominated by heat exchange with the hydrosphere, which still buffers Earth’s heat loss today.
This article has been cited by other articles:
 |
|
 |
|
  M. de Wit and C. Thiart Metallogenic fingerprints of Archaean cratons Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 2005; 248: 59 - 70. [Abstract] [PDF]
|
|
