Evidence for igneous differentiation in Sudbury Igneous Complex and impact-driven evolution of terrestrial planet proto-crusts.

ABSTRACT: Bolide impact is a ubiquitous geological process in the Solar System, which produced craters and basins filled with impact melt sheets on the terrestrial planets. However, it remains controversial whether these sheets were able to undergo large-scale igneous differentiation, or not. Here, we report on the discovery of large discrete bodies of melanorites that occur throughout almost the entire stratigraphy of the 1.85-billion-year-old Sudbury Igneous Complex (SIC) - the best exposed impact melt sheet on Earth - and use them to reaffirm that conspicuous norite-gabbro-granophyre stratigraphy of the SIC is produced by fractional crystallization of an originally homogeneous impact melt of granodioritic composition. This implies that more ancient and compositionally primitive Hadean impact melt

SUBMITTER: Latypov R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6355857 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature