The early differentiation of Mars inferred from Hf-W chronometry

Kruijer, Thomas S.; Kleine, Thorsten; Borg, Lars E.; Brennecka, Gregory A.; Irving, Anthony J.; Bischoff, Addi; Agee, Carl B.

doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2017.06.047

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The early differentiation of Mars inferred from Hf-W chronometry

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https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017E&PSL.474..345K
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Kruijer, T. S., Kleine, T., Borg, L. E., Brennecka, G. A., Irving, A. J., Bischoff, A., et al. (2017). The early differentiation of Mars inferred from Hf-W chronometry. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 474, 345-354. doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2017.06.047.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000D-CEB7-D

Abstract

Mars probably accreted within the first 10 million years of Solar System formation and likely underwent magma ocean crystallization and crust formation soon thereafter. To assess the nature and timescales of these large-scale mantle differentiation processes we applied the short-lived ¹⁸²Hf-¹⁸²W and ¹⁴⁶Sm-¹⁴²Nd chronometers to a comprehensive suite of martian meteorites, including several shergottites, augite basalt NWA 8159, orthopyroxenite ALH 84001 and polymict breccia NWA 7034. Compared to previous studies the ¹⁸²W data are significantly more precise and have been obtained for a more diverse suite of martian meteorites, ranging from samples from highly depleted to highly enriched mantle and crustal sources. Our results show that martian meteorites exhibit widespread ¹⁸²W/¹⁸⁴W variations that are broadly correlated with ¹⁴²Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd, implying that silicate differentiation (and not core formation) is the main cause of the observed ¹⁸²W/¹⁸⁴W differences. The combined ¹⁸²W-¹⁴²Nd systematics are best explained by magma ocean crystallization on Mars within ∼20-25 million years after Solar System formation, followed by crust formation ∼15 million years later. These ages are indistinguishable from the I-Pu-Xe age for the formation of Mars' atmosphere, indicating that the major differentiation of Mars into mantle, crust, and atmosphere occurred between 20 and 40 million years after Solar System formation and, hence, earlier than previously inferred based on Sm-Nd chronometry alone.