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Published Online January 29, 2009
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1167330

Reports

Submitted on October 17, 2008
Accepted on December 15, 2008

Zircon Dating of Oceanic Crustal Accretion

C. Johan Lissenberg 1*, Matthew Rioux 2, Nobumichi Shimizu 3, Samuel A. Bowring 2, Catherine Mével 4

1 Equipe de Géosciences Marines, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, 4 Place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France.; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.; Present address: School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University, Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3YE, UK.
2 Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
3 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.
4 Equipe de Géosciences Marines, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, 4 Place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
C. Johan Lissenberg , E-mail: lissenbergcj{at}cardiff.ac.uk

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


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)
Geology 37, 927-930
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)