Journal
NATURE
Volume 429, Issue 6991, Pages 546-548Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nature02577
Keywords
-
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Deformation and melting of the crust during the formation of large impact craters must have been important during the Earth's early evolution, but such processes remain poorly understood(1). The 1.8-billion-year-old Sudbury structure(2) in Ontario, Canada, is greater than 200 km in diameter and preserves a complete impact section, including shocked basement rocks, an impact melt sheet and fallback material(3,4). It has generally been thought that the most voluminous impact melts represent the average composition of the continental crust(4), but here we show that the melt sheet now preserved as the Sudbury Igneous Complex is derived predominantly from the lower crust. We therefore infer that the hypervelocity impact caused a partial inversion of the compositional layering of the continental crust. Using geochemical data, including platinum-group-element abundances, we also show that the matrix of the overlying clast-laden Onaping Formation represents a mixture of the original surficial sedimentary strata, shock-melted lower crust and the impactor itself.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available