. (2016) 'Titanium stable isotope investigation of magmatic processes on the Earth and Moon.', Earth and planetary science letters., 449 . pp. 197-205. Further information on publisher's website:
Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.
An early call for plate tectonics
The composition of continental crust far back in Earth's history gives us insight into when plate tectonics ramped up and has influenced ocean chemistry. Greber
et al.
looked at titanium isotopes in shales, which form from eroded continental crustal sediments, to estimate the composition 3.5 billion years ago, closer to the origins of Earth. They found a silica-rich composition, which indicates that plate tectonics was happening deep in our distant past. Other changes in crustal composition might be linked to changing ocean chemistry and major events such as the oxygenation of our atmosphere.
Science
, this issue p.
1271
The history of the growth of continental crust is uncertain, and several different models that involve a gradual, decelerating, or stepwise process have been proposed. Even more uncertain is the timing and the secular trend of the emergence of most landmasses above the sea (subaerial landmasses), with estimates ranging from about one billion to three billion years ago. The area of emerged crust influences global climate feedbacks and the supply of nutrients to the oceans , and therefore connects Earth's crustal evolution to surface environmental conditions. Here we use the triple-oxygen-isotope composition of shales from all continents, spanning 3.7 billion years, to provide constraints on the emergence of continents over time. Our measurements show a stepwise total decrease of 0.08 per mille in the average triple-oxygen-isotope value of shales across the Archaean-Proterozoic boundary. We suggest that our data are best explained by a shift in the nature of water-rock interactions, from near-coastal in the Archaean era to predominantly continental in the Proterozoic, accompanied by a decrease in average surface temperatures. We propose that this shift may have coincided with the onset of a modern hydrological cycle owing to the rapid emergence of continental crust with near-modern average elevation and aerial extent roughly 2.5 billion years ago.
19Molybdenum isotopes are increasingly widely applied in Earth Sciences. They are 20 primarily used to investigate the oxygenation of Earth's ocean and atmosphere. 21However, more and more fields of application are being developed; e.g. magmatic and 22
Molybdenum concentration and δ98/95Mo values for NIST SRM 610 and 612 (solid glass), NIST SRM 3134 (lot 891307; liquid) and IAPSO seawater reference material are presented based on comparative measurements by MC‐ICP‐MS performed in laboratories at the Universities of Bern and Oxford. NIST SRM 3134 and NIST SRM 610 and 612 were found to have identical and homogeneous 98Mo/95Mo ratios at a test portion mass of 0.02 g. We suggest, therefore, that NIST SRM 3134 should be used as reference for the δ–Mo notation and to employ NIST SRM 610 or 612 as solid silicate secondary measurement standards, in the absence of an isotopically homogeneous solid geological reference material for Mo. The δ98/95MoJMC Bern composition (Johnson Matthey ICP standard solution, lot 602332B as reference) of NIST SRM 3134 was 0.25 ± 0.09‰ (2s). Based on five new values, we determined more precisely the mean open ocean δ98/95MoSRM 3134 value of 2.09 ± 0.07‰, which equals the value of δ98/95MoJMC Bern of 2.34 ± 0.07‰. We also refined the Mo concentration data for NIST SRM 610 to 412 ± 9 μg g−1 (2s) and NIST SRM 612 to 6.4 ± 0.7 μg g−1 by isotope dilution. We propose these concentration data as new working values, which allow for more accurate in situ Mo determination using laser ablation ICP‐MS or SIMS.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.