Mineral Environments on the Earliest Earth
2010/02/01 by Dominic Papineau · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils #Geological and Geochemical Analysis #Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism Studies #Citation #Icon #Hadean #Library science #Mineral exploration #Geology #Archaeology #Computer science #Earth science #Crust #History #Geochemistry
paper · doi:10.2113/gselements.6.1.25
openalex publication_date 2010/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Abstract
The oldest vestiges of crust and marine environments occur only in a few remote areas on Earth today. These rocks are Hadean-Eoarchean in age (∼4.5 to 3.6 billion years old) and represent the only available archive of the mineral environments in which life originated. A mineral inventory of the oldest rocks would thus help to constrain the likeliest minerals involved in the origin of life. Such a survey is important from the perspective of mineral evolution, as the emergence of life and subsequent global changes caused by organisms were responsible for more than half the 4400 known minerals on the modern Earth.
Citations
- Evidence from detrital zircons for the existence of continental crust and oceans on the Earth 4.4 Gyr ago
- New 1:20,000 scale geological maps, synthesis and history of investigation of the Isua supracrustal belt and adjacent orthogneisses, southern West Greenland: A glimpse of Eoarchaean crust formation and orogeny
- A light carbon reservoir recorded in zircon-hosted diamond from the Jack Hills
- Priscoan (4.00-4.03 Ga) orthogneisses from northwestern Canada
- Evidence for life on Earth before 3,800 million years ago
- Pre-3750 Ma supracrustal rocks from the Nuvvuagittuq supracrustal belt, northern Québec
- Some Precambrian banded iron-formations (BIFs) from around the world: Their age, geologic setting, mineralogy, metamorphism, geochemistry, and origins
- Remnants of ≥3800 Ma crust in the Chinese part of the Sino-Korean craton
- 13 C-Depleted Carbon Microparticles in >3700-Ma Sea-Floor Sedimentary Rocks from West Greenland
- Neodymium-142 Evidence for Hadean Mafic Crust
- Magmatic δ18O in 4400–3900 Ma detrital zircons: A record of the alteration and recycling of crust in the Early Archean
- New U-Pb and Hf isotopic data confirm Anshan as the oldest preserved segment of the North China Craton
- Mineral evolution
Cited by