Pilbara rocks reveal the origins of Earth’s earliest continents

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-04-01 02:00

Australia; WA

Bäras, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

Most of Earth’s continental crust formed over 2.5 billion years ago, but debate still rages about the processes involved. The earliest continents were made of a type of granite that needed water to form - so where did the water come from? Using the ancient rocks from the Pilbara region of WA, Aussie scientists have shown that the water required to produce the granites did not come from above but was supplied from the mantle, which is the thick layer below the Earth’s crust. This suggests the Earth may have once operated very differently than it does today.

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conference: Nature

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Organisation/s: Curtin University, The University of Western Australia, Geoscience Australia, Geological Survey of Western Australia

Funder: T.E.J. acknowledges funding from the Australian Government through an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP200101104), and support from the State Key Laboratory for Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan (Open Fund GPMR201903). This project was supported by funding from the Western Australian Government Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS). We thank M. Prause for drafting the figures and M. Aleshin for assistance with SIMS analyses. We acknowledge the facilities, and the scientific and technical assistance, of Microscopy Australia at the Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis, The University of Western Australia, a facility funded by the University, and the Western Australian and Commonwealth of Australia governments.

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