Evidence of extensive lunar crust formation in impact melt sheets 4,330 Myr ago

Lee Francis White, Ana Černok, James Darling, Martin J. Whitehouse, Katie Joy, C. Cayron, Joseph Nicholas Dunlop, Kimberly Tait, Mahesh Anand

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    Abstract

    Accurately constraining the formation and evolution of the lunar magnesian (Mg) suite is key to understanding the earliest periods of magmatic crustal building that followed accretion and primordial differentiation of the Moon. However, the origin and evolution of these unique rocks is highly debated. Here, we report on the microstructural characterisation of a large (~250 μm) baddeleyite (monoclinic-ZrO2) grain in Apollo troctolite 76535 that preserves quantifiable crystallographic relationships indicative of reversion from a precursor cubic-ZrO2 phase. This observation places important constraints on the formation temperature of the grain (> 2300 °C) which endogenic processes alone fail to reconcile. We conclude that the troctolite crystallized directly from a large, differentiated impact melt sheet 4326 ± 14 million years (Myr) ago. These results suggest that impact bombardment would have played a critical role in the evolution of the earliest planetary crusts.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number0
    Pages (from-to)974-978
    Number of pages5
    JournalNature Astronomy
    Volume4
    Issue number10
    Early online date11 May 2020
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2020

    Keywords

    • Moon
    • meteorite
    • Baddeleyite
    • Geochronology
    • meteorite impact
    • Apollo
    • Lunar
    • Microstructure
    • EBSD
    • SIMS
    • geology
    • geological materials
    • RCUK
    • STFC
    • ST/L000776/1
    • ST/P000657/1
    • ST/M001253
    • ST/S000291/1

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