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Article
Giant impacts and the origin and evolution of continents
Earth is the only planet known to have continents, although how they formed and evolved is unclear. Here using the oxygen isotope compositions of dated magmatic zircon, we show that the Pilbara Craton in Weste...
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Article
Zircon oxygen and hafnium isotope decoupling during regional metamorphism: implications for the generation of low δ18O magmas
Measurements of U–Th–Pb, Lu–Hf and oxygen isotopes as well as selected trace and rare earth elements were carried out on zircon grains from high-grade metasedimentary rocks from the Albany–Fraser Orogen in sou...
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Article
Correction: Corrigendum: Earth’s first stable continents did not form by subduction
Nature 543, 239–242 (2017); doi:10.1038/nature21383 In this Letter we omitted to cite a paper1 that also used recently developed thermodynamic models2 to predict the melting process in Archaean metabasaltic ro...
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Article
Earth’s first stable continents did not form by subduction
Phase equilibria modelling of rocks from Western Australia confirms that the ancient continental crust could have formed by multistage melting of basaltic ‘parents’ along high geothermal gradients—a process in...
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Article
Progressive mixing of meteoritic veneer into the early Earth’s deep mantle
Maier et al. have sampled a class of volcanic rocks called komatiites, which are indirect samples of the deepest portions of the Earth's mantle mainly from the Archaean era. It is generally thought that the mantl...
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Article
The case for Archaean boninites
Rare Archaean light rare earth element (LREE)-enriched mafic rocks derived from a strongly refractory mantle source show a range of features in common with modern boninites. These Archaean second-stage melts a...
