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Originally published in Science Express on 29 January 2009
Science 20 February 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5917, pp. 1048 - 1050
DOI: 10.1126/science.1167330
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Reports

Zircon Dating of Oceanic Crustal Accretion

C. Johan Lissenberg,1,2*{dagger} Matthew Rioux,3 Nobumichi Shimizu,2 Samuel A. Bowring,3 Catherine Mével1

Most of Earth's present-day crust formed at mid-ocean ridges. High-precision uranium-lead dating of zircons in gabbros from the Vema Fracture Zone on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge reveals that the crust there grew in a highly regular pattern characterized by shallow melt delivery. Combined with results from previous dating studies, this finding suggests that two distinct modes of crustal accretion occur along slow-spreading ridges. Individual samples record a zircon date range of 90,000 to 235,000 years, which is interpreted to reflect the time scale of zircon crystallization in oceanic plutonic rocks.

1 Equipe de Géosciences Marines, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, 4 Place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France.
2 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.
3 Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

* Present address: School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University, Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3YE, UK.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lissenbergcj{at}cardiff.ac.uk

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Impact melt sheet zircons and their implications for the Hadean crust.
J. Darling, C. Storey, and C. Hawkesworth (2009)
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