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Continuous plate subduction marked by the rise of alkali magmatism 2.1 billion years ago

Over the Earth’s evolutionary history, the style of plate subduction has evolved through time due to the secular cooling of the mantle. While continuous subduction is a typical feature of modern plate tectonics, a stagnant-lid tectonic regime with localized episodic subduction likely characterized t...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Liu, He, Sun, Wei-dong, Zartman, Robert, Tang, Ming
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6667441/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31363091
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11329-z
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author Liu, He
Sun, Wei-dong
Zartman, Robert
Tang, Ming
author_facet Liu, He
Sun, Wei-dong
Zartman, Robert
Tang, Ming
author_sort Liu, He
collection PubMed
description Over the Earth’s evolutionary history, the style of plate subduction has evolved through time due to the secular cooling of the mantle. While continuous subduction is a typical feature of modern plate tectonics, a stagnant-lid tectonic regime with localized episodic subduction likely characterized the early Earth. The timing of the transition between these two subduction styles bears important insights into Earth’s cooling history. Here we apply a statistical analysis to a large geochemical dataset of mafic rocks spanning the last 3.5 Ga, which shows an increasing magnitude of alkali basaltic magmatism beginning at ca. 2.1 Ga. We propose that the rapid rise of continental alkali basalts correlates with an abruptly decreasing degree of mantle melting resulting from the enhanced cooling of the mantle at ca. 2.1 Ga. This might be a consequence of the initiation of continuous subduction, which recycled increasing volumes of cold oceanic crust into the mantle.
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spelling pubmed-66674412019-08-01 Continuous plate subduction marked by the rise of alkali magmatism 2.1 billion years ago Liu, He Sun, Wei-dong Zartman, Robert Tang, Ming Nat Commun Article Over the Earth’s evolutionary history, the style of plate subduction has evolved through time due to the secular cooling of the mantle. While continuous subduction is a typical feature of modern plate tectonics, a stagnant-lid tectonic regime with localized episodic subduction likely characterized the early Earth. The timing of the transition between these two subduction styles bears important insights into Earth’s cooling history. Here we apply a statistical analysis to a large geochemical dataset of mafic rocks spanning the last 3.5 Ga, which shows an increasing magnitude of alkali basaltic magmatism beginning at ca. 2.1 Ga. We propose that the rapid rise of continental alkali basalts correlates with an abruptly decreasing degree of mantle melting resulting from the enhanced cooling of the mantle at ca. 2.1 Ga. This might be a consequence of the initiation of continuous subduction, which recycled increasing volumes of cold oceanic crust into the mantle. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-07-30 /pmc/articles/PMC6667441/ /pubmed/31363091 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11329-z Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Liu, He
Sun, Wei-dong
Zartman, Robert
Tang, Ming
Continuous plate subduction marked by the rise of alkali magmatism 2.1 billion years ago
title Continuous plate subduction marked by the rise of alkali magmatism 2.1 billion years ago
title_full Continuous plate subduction marked by the rise of alkali magmatism 2.1 billion years ago
title_fullStr Continuous plate subduction marked by the rise of alkali magmatism 2.1 billion years ago
title_full_unstemmed Continuous plate subduction marked by the rise of alkali magmatism 2.1 billion years ago
title_short Continuous plate subduction marked by the rise of alkali magmatism 2.1 billion years ago
title_sort continuous plate subduction marked by the rise of alkali magmatism 2.1 billion years ago
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6667441/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31363091
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11329-z
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