Bowring S A, Housh T
Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139, USA.
Science. 1995 Sep 15;269(5230):1535-40. doi: 10.1126/science.7667634.
The Archean crust contains direct geochemical information of the Earth's early planetary differentiation. A major outstanding question in the Earth sciences is whether the volume of continental crust today represents nearly all that formed over Earth's history or whether its rates of creation and destruction have been approximately balanced since the Archean. Analysis of neodymium isotopic data from the oldest remnants of Archean crust suggests that crustal recycling is important and that preserved continental crust comprises fragments of crust that escaped recycling. Furthermore, the data suggest that the isotopic evolution of Earth's mantle reflects progressive eradication of primordial heterogeneities related to early differentiation.
太古宙地壳包含了地球早期行星分异的直接地球化学信息。地球科学中一个主要的悬而未决的问题是，如今大陆地壳的体积是否几乎代表了地球历史上形成的所有地壳，或者自太古宙以来其形成和破坏的速率是否大致平衡。对太古宙地壳最古老残余物的钕同位素数据的分析表明，地壳再循环很重要，且保存下来的大陆地壳由未参与再循环的地壳碎片组成。此外，这些数据表明，地球地幔的同位素演化反映了与早期分异相关的原始不均一性的逐渐消除。
