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Published March 28, 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Making continental crust on water-bearing terrestrial planets

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Géosciences Environnement Toulouse
  • 2. ROR icon Laboratoire Magmas et Volcans
  • 3. ROR icon University of Johannesburg
  • 4. ROR icon Institute of Experimental Mineralogy
  • 5. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 6. ROR icon Colorado School of Mines

Abstract

The debate about early Earth differentiation focuses on the processes responsible for the formation of protocrust(s) and continental crust of felsic (SiO2 ≥ 55 weight %) composition. One aspect of this debate is how Hadean zircons fit into an ultramafic environment. On the basis of experiments, thermodynamic modeling, and elemental partitioning, we show that felsic melts could have been generated by shallow interaction between primordial serpentinized peridotite and basaltic magmas on Earth and Mars. On the basis of the hafnium isotopic evolution of Hadean detrital zircons worldwide, we infer that these interactions allowed for the formation of extensive Hadean felsic crust (4.4 to 4.5 billion years ago), which, in turn, would account for up to 50% of the present continental crustal mass. A similar process may have occurred on Mars. The serpentinized protocrust had a dual role in the primitive planetary environment: to provide ingredients for the continental crust and to enable life to emerge on water-bearing terrestrial planets.

Copyright and License

© 2025 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution
NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

Acknowledgement

We did not use any editing services or AI-assisted technologies in the preparation of this manuscript. We thank the editors and the reviewers for important suggestions on the initial version of the paper.

Funding

M.G. acknowledges funding from ClerVolc (ANR-10-LABX-0006). This manuscript is contribution no. 683 of the ClerVolc program of the International Research Center for Disaster Sciences and Sustainable Development of the University Clermont Auvergne. A.Y.B. thank funding PLAGIOGRAN grant from INSU-CNRS and FELSIC_PLANETA from OMP, France. This article is funded by the European Union (ERC, PLANETAFELSIC, project 101141259) to A.Y.B. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL EXECUTIVE AGENCY (ERCEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Supplemental Material

 

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Additional details

Identifiers

PMID
40138399
PMCID
PMC11939034

Related works

Describes
Journal Article: 40138399 (PMID)
Journal Article: PMC11939034 (PMCID)

Funding

Agence Nationale de la Recherche
ClerVolc ANR-10-LABX-0006
Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées
FELSIC_PLANETA -
European Union
PLANETAFELSIC 101141259

Dates

Accepted
2025-02-24
Available
2025-03-26
Published

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)
Publication Status
Published