The earliest continents

With the loss of the early atmosphere during planetary

collisions, the Earth would have cooled quickly, the outer
portions would have solidified, and it would have developed
its first crust.
Some of the oldest rocks on Earth come from exposures in
western Greenland near Isua. These include ancient
sediments and volcanic lavas that have since been subjected
to folding and intrusion by younger igneous rocks.

Metamorphosed sediments from Isua ~3.9 Ga, which is

regarded as a minimum age of sediment deposition.

However, these rocks were formed by weathering and

erosion of pre-existing crustal material, and may
preserve clues as to the age and origin of this older crust.
Just as Hf–W was ideal for studying the rates of accretion
and core formation, and I–Xe is useful for studying the rate
of formation of the atmosphere, the 146Sm–142Nd
(samarium–neodymium) system is useful for studying the
early history of melting in the silicate Earth. 146Sm decays
to 142Nd with a half-life of 103 million years
During melting of the silicate mantle to produce the crust,
Nd is more incompatible than Sm (that is, Nd is
preferentially partitioned into the silicate melt) producing
a crust with a low Sm/Nd ratio and leaving the mantle
with a complementary high Sm/Nd ratio
If melting of the silicate Earth occurred within the lifetime
of the now extinct 146Sm (about 500 Ma), then this would
fractionate Sm/Nd and could potentially produce
differences in the abundance of 142Nd in early crust.

If subsequent recycling of such crust by weathering and

erosion or meteorite impact failed to eradicate the
difference in 142Nd, then this might be detectable in early
Archaean rocks.
However, such 142Nd differences, if they ever existed, were
always likely to be small because of the low abundance of
146Sm in the early Solar System. As a consequence their
measurement is extremely difficult and for many years only
one sample showed the hint of such an effect, and these data
were questioned by many.

Study of 142Nd anomalies has, needless to say, focused on

the Isua rocks and improved measurement techniques have
recently confirmed the existence of differences in 142Nd
(from the present-day mantle) in many rock types seen at
Isua, including metamorphosed sediments and volcanic rocks
.
These results indicate that the precursor materials of the
Isua rocks were derived from material that differentiated
from the silicate mantle within 50 Ma of the start of the
Solar System.
Surprisingly, it was also discovered that an excess of 142Nd
is ubiquitous in all modern terrestrial rocks relative to
chondritic meteorites.
If it is assumed that chondritic meteorites are
representative of the material from which the Earth was
made, then this excess 142Nd indicates that the silicate
Earth must have experienced a global chemical
differentiation within 50 Ma of the start of the Solar
System.
Continents and the hydrosphere during the Hadean

The Archaean sediments and volcanic rocks at Isua and at

other locations across the world show that by about 3.9 Ga
water was present on the surface of the Earth, and that a
cycle of erosion and deposition of continental rocks had been
established.

Is there any evidence for water further back in time?

evidence is from a lonely outcrop of Archaean sandstones and

conglomerates in the Murchison district of Western Australia.
These ancient rocks, which are about 3 Ga old, are known
as the Mount Narryer and Jack Hills quartzite units.
They contain detrital grains of the mineral zircon. Zircons
are of enormous value to Earth scientists because, once
formed, they are almost indestructible and contain high
concentrations of U and Th and other important trace
elements.

Hence they are one of the primary sources of high-

precision ages from Pb isotopes of crustal rocks and their
trace element contents provide further information on
their formation conditions and provenance.
Zircons form as accessory minerals in igneous rocks, usually
granites, but, because of their indestructibility, they can
survive the rock cycle of erosion, transport and deposition
and are frequently preserved in coarse-grained sedimentary
rocks such as sandstones, grits and conglomerates, and their
metamorphic equivalents, e.g. quartzite.

Thus, the inescapable conclusion is that the Jack Hills zircons

must have been inherited from an older granite and so from
older continental crust. So far this is not very exciting – rocks
are known that are almost 1 Ga older than the
Jack Hills quartzites, so why the excitement?
Detailed isotopic analysis of the Pb isotope composition of
these zircons has revealed that they range in ages from
3.05 Ga, which is close to the age of deposition, up to
much older ages – a significant number of crystals are in
excess of 4 Ga. Indeed, the oldest has an age of 4.4 Ga
and formed only 170 Ma after the start of the Solar
System.

These zircons are the oldest solid material and are thought
to represent a tiny sample inherited from some of the
Earth’s original continental crust.
Images of a zircon from the Jack Hills Quartzites in Western
Australia: shows the damage produced during ion-microprobe
analyses. Temperatures are in degrees Celsius and refer to
results from an assessment of their Ti contents.
That conclusion is in itself exciting – solid material from the
Hadean and evidence for continental crust – but apart from
their age, the Jack Hills zircons show compositional
variations that allow conditions of crystallisation to be
inferred. It turns out that the zircons crystallised at a
temperature of around 700 ºC.
Granites can only form at this temperature if water is
present. They form by dehydration reactions in which
mica breaks down, releasing substantial amounts of water
that dissolve in the silicate melt so generated.

The presence of granite and its crystallisation at low

temperatures is powerful evidence that water was
present in the earliest crust of the Earth.
This argument may appear a little convoluted, and the leap
from the tiny Jack Hills zircons to a planet with continents and
an active low-temperature hydrosphere is large, but the logic
is sound. The information gleaned from these zircons is that
the surface environment during the Hadean may have been
remarkably similar to the Earth today!