Geological Evidence for the Operation of Plate Tectonics throughout the Archean: Records from Archean Paleo-Plate Boundaries

Kusky, Timothy; Windley, Brian F.; Polat, Ali

doi:10.1007/s12583-018-0999-6

Cited by 115 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 95 publications

(120 reference statements)

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“…The carbonate-silicate cycle on Earth functions via subductive-type plate tectonics, the presence of a hydrosphere, and continental crust. For Earth, there are several lines of evidence to suggest that these may go back to the Hadean (e.g., Harrison, 2009;Harrison et al, 2017;Hopkins et al, 2008;Korenaga, 2013Korenaga, , 2018Kusky et al, 2018;Maruyama et al, 2018;Mojzsis et al, 2001;O'Neill et al, 2017;Rozel et al, 2017, and references therein). Dehant et al (2019) review the literature for a later beginning of plate tectonics on Earth (section 3.2).…”

Section: 1029/2019je006276mentioning

confidence: 99%

Venusian Habitable Climate Scenarios: Modeling Venus Through Time and Applications to Slowly Rotating Venus‐Like Exoplanets

2020

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One popular view of Venus' climate history describes a world that has spent much of its life with surface liquid water, plate tectonics, and a stable temperate climate. Part of the basis for this optimistic scenario is the high deuterium to hydrogen ratio from the Pioneer Venus mission that was interpreted to imply Venus had a shallow ocean's worth of water throughout much of its history. Another view is that Venus had a long-lived (∼100 million years) primordial magma ocean with a CO 2 and steam atmosphere. Venus' long-lived steam atmosphere would sufficient time to dissociate most of the water vapor, allow significant hydrogen escape, and oxidize the magma ocean. A third scenario is that Venus had surface water and habitable conditions early in its history for a short period of time (<1 Gyr), but that a moist/runaway greenhouse took effect because of a gradually warming Sun, leaving the planet desiccated ever since. Using a general circulation model, we demonstrate the viability of the first scenario using the few observational constraints available. We further speculate that large igneous provinces and the global resurfacing hundreds of millions of years ago played key roles in ending the clement period in its history and presenting the Venus we see today. The results have implications for what astronomers term "the habitable zone," and if Venus-like exoplanets exist with clement conditions akin to modern Earth, we propose to place them in what we term the "optimistic Venus zone." Plain Language SummaryWe have little data on our neighbor Venus to help us understand its climate history. Yet Earth and Venus are sister worlds: They initially formed close to one another and have nearly the same mass and radius. Despite the differences in their current atmospheres and surface temperatures, they likely have similar bulk compositions, making comparison between them extremely valuable for illuminating their distinct climate histories. We analyze our present data on Venus alongside knowledge about Earth's climate history to make a number of exciting claims. Evaluating several snapshots in time over the past 4+ billion years, we show that Venus could have sustained liquid water and moderate temperatures for most of this period. Cloud feedbacks from a slowly rotating world with surface liquid water reservoirs were the keys to keeping the planet clement. Contrast this with its current surface temperature of 450 • and an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Our results demonstrate that it was not the gradual warming of the Sun over the eons that contributed to Venus present hothouse state. Rather, we speculate that large igneous provinces and the global resurfacing hundreds of millions of years ago played key roles in ending the clement period in its history.

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Section: 1029/2019je006276mentioning

confidence: 99%

Venusian Habitable Climate Scenarios: Modeling Venus Through Time and Applications to Slowly Rotating Venus‐Like Exoplanets

2020

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“…Models of tectonic regimes in a stagnant lid Earth show pulses of lateral movements (Beall et al, 2018;Capitanio et al, 2019a,b), and lateral movements may result in distinctive regimes in the metamorphic FIGURE 2 | The changing tectonic styles from 3.5 to 2.4 Ga in Western Australia. (A) A sketch map of the dome and basin terrain of Pilbara in NW Australia, after Hickman (2004) and Van Kranendonk (2010) (B) geological sketch map of the Yilgarn craton and the N-S trending mobile belts in the East Yilgarn (after Kusky et al, 2018), and (C) a map of the Widgiemooltha dyke swarm in the SW Yilgarn.…”

Section: Tectonic and Metamorphic Asymmetrymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolution of the Continental Crust and the Onset of Plate Tectonics

2020

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The Earth is the only known planet where plate tectonics is active, and different studies have concluded that plate tectonics commenced at times from the early Hadean to 700 Ma. Many arguments rely on proxies established on recent examples, such as paired metamorphic belts and magma geochemistry, and it can be difficult to establish the significance of such proxies in a hotter, older Earth. There is the question of scale, and how the results of different case studies are put in a wider global context. We explore approaches that indicate when plate tectonics became the dominant global regime, in part by evaluating when the effects of plate tectonics were established globally, rather than the first sign of its existence regionally. The geological record reflects when the continental crust became rigid enough to facilitate plate tectonics, through the onset of dyke swarms and large sedimentary basins, from relatively highpressure metamorphism and evidence for crustal thickening. Paired metamorphic belts are a feature of destructive plate margins over the last 700 Myr, but it is difficult to establish whether metamorphic events are associated spatially as well as temporally in older terrains. From 3.8 to 2.7 Ga, suites of high Th/Nb (subduction-related on the modern Earth) and low Th/Nb (non-subduction-related) magmas were generated at similar times in different locations, and there is a striking link between the geochemistry and the regional tectonic style. Archean cratons stabilized at different times in different areas from 3.1 to 2.5 Ga, and the composition of juvenile continental crust changed from mafic to more intermediate compositions. Xenon isotope data indicate that there was little recycling of volatiles before 3 Ga. Evidence for the juxtaposition of continental fragments back to ∼2.8 Ga, each with disparate histories highlights that fragments of crust were moving around laterally on the Earth. The reduction in crustal growth at ∼3 Ga is attributed to an increase in the rates at which differentiated continental crust was destroyed, and that coupled with the other changes at the end of the Archean are taken to reflect the onset of plate tectonics as the dominant global regime.

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“…OPS is defined as "the sequence of igneous basement representing oceanic lithosphere, together with its carapace of sedimentary and igneous rocks that were deposited on the sea floor as the underlying oceanic basement moves from a mid ocean ridge to a deep-sea trench" (Kusky et al, 2011;Kusky et al, 2013;Kusky, Windley & Polat, 2018). The classic OPS section is represented by mid-ocean ridge basalt-chert (limestone)-hemipelagic shale/ mudstone-sandstone/ conglomerate/ turbidite (Maruyama, Kawai, & Windley, 2010), but there are many possible variations regarding with an idealized model of OPS reconstruction (Kusky et al, 2013;Kusky, Windley & Polat, 2018;Maruyama et al, 2010;Wakita, 2012;Wakita & Metcalfe, 2005), particularly, different types of oceanic basement that the sedimentary carapace gets deposited upon, to the types of early sediments (such as carbonates) and to the variations acquired in the younger sediments as the oceanic basement approaches different types of convergent margins (Kusky et al, 2013;Kusky, Windley & Polat, 2018).…”

Section: Is the Lake Zone With Ops A Remnant Part From The Paleo-asmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Early Palaeozoic mega‐thrusting of the Gondwana‐derived Altay–Lake zone in western Mongolia: Implications for the development of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt and Paleo‐Asian Ocean evolution

Khukhuudei

Kusky

Otgonbayar³

et al. 2020

Geological Journal

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The position of structures of Mongolia during Rodinia break‐up and Paleo‐Asian Ocean opening is debatable, and reconstructions between them are poorly known. In this paper, we apply an integrated approach to the not widely known yet distinctive structure (ribbon‐like) of the Lake and Mongolian Altay zones in western Mongolia, relating these with the surrounding Tuva–Mongolian and central Mongolian microcontinents (CMMs) development within the Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB) and Paleo‐Asian Ocean evolution. We present a summary of the Neoproterozoic–early Palaeozoic tectonic development of western Mongolia and the CAOB and suggest a new comprehensive model for its evolution. The Lake zone of Mongolia is a major zone of ophiolite and arc complexes within the CAOB. The main sections of ophiolites are located along the west margin, bordering with Precambrian crystalline basement of the CMM. The ophiolites are distributed from north to south and have been dated to have similar ages. A classic oceanic plate stratigraphy section is preserved in the Lake zone. Serpentinite mélange and other volcanogenic‐terrigenous assemblages from the Lake zone are characterized by a system of nappe sheets thrust over the Dzavkhan block of the CMM. The ribbon‐like structure that the southern part of the Altay–Lake zone preserves at present provides an explanation for the development between the Gondwana‐derived microcontinent and Paleo‐Asian Ocean. During the pre‐Neoproterozoic, convergence accretion between Siberia and the CMM formed the Tuva–Mongolian belt, which later converted to the Altay–Lake collision zone associated with the thrusting of its eastern margin. All well‐known ophiolites of western Mongolia (Agardag, Khantayshir, and Dariv) as well as ophiolites of the Erdene Uul area mostly correspond to an “open‐ocean” phase with drifting microcontinents between 655 and 540 Ma or Neoproterozoic. In the early Neoproterozoic, the Altay peninsula‐like ribbon microcontinent after rifting of East Gondwana gradually drifted to Siberia. In this time, the east margin of the Paleo‐Asian Ocean was developed as a passive margin with the Dzavkhan Block. The Paleo‐Asian ocean plate simultaneously drifted to the CMM, whereas the Altay microcontinent moved into Siberia‐CMM. In middle‐upper Neoproterozoic times, the eastern part of the Paleo‐Asian ocean plate was thrusted over the CMM, obducting ophiolites (e.g., Tas Khairkhan), in the early Cambrian time, an oceanic spreading centre (?) of the Paleo‐Asian Ocean reached the CMM and stopped obduction. In the Neoproterozoic, the west margin of the Paleo‐Asian Ocean was developed as an active continental margin, with subduction under the Gondwana‐derived microcontinent. In the early Cambrian, there was significant subduction rollback and accretion of seamounts (Turgen). Later, in middle Cambrian–early Ordovician times, a large turbidite sequence was deposited in Altay. During the Devonian to Carboniferous, the Paleo‐Asian Ocean was preserved as a remnant ocean or big sea (Lake zone), accumulating ...

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Geological Evidence for the Operation of Plate Tectonics throughout the Archean: Records from Archean Paleo-Plate Boundaries

Cited by 115 publications

References 95 publications

Venusian Habitable Climate Scenarios: Modeling Venus Through Time and Applications to Slowly Rotating Venus‐Like Exoplanets

Venusian Habitable Climate Scenarios: Modeling Venus Through Time and Applications to Slowly Rotating Venus‐Like Exoplanets

The Evolution of the Continental Crust and the Onset of Plate Tectonics

The Early Palaeozoic mega‐thrusting of the Gondwana‐derived Altay–Lake zone in western Mongolia: Implications for the development of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt and Paleo‐Asian Ocean evolution

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