Hadean Zircon Petrochronology

Abstract

The inspiration for this volume arose in part from a shift in perception among U–Pb geochronologists that began to develop in the late 1980s. Prior to then, analytical geochronology emphasized progressively lower blank analysis of separated accessory mineral aggregates (e.g., Krogh 1982; Parrish 1987), with results generally interpreted to reflect a singular moment in time. For example, a widespread measure of confidence in intra-analytical reliability was conformity to an MSWD (a form of χ2 test; Wendt and Carl 1991) of unity. This approach implicitly assumed that geological processes act on timescales that are short with respect to analytical errors (e.g., Schoene et al. 2015). As in situ methodologies (e.g., Compston and Pidgeon 1986; Harrison et al. 1997; Griffin et al. 2000) and increasingly well-calibrated double spikes (e.g., Amelin and Davis 2006; McLean et al. 2015) emerged, geochronologists began to move away from interpreting geological processes as a series of instantaneous episodes (e.g., Rubatto 2002). At about the same time, petrologists developed techniques that permitted in situ chemical analyses to be interpreted in terms of continuously changing pressure–temperature–time histories (e.g., Spear 1988). The recognition followed that specific mineral reactions yielded products that could be directly dated or interpreted in terms of protracted petrogenetic processes. Part of this shift was due to an appreciation that trace elements in accessory phases could identify the changing nature of modal mineralogy during crystal growth (e.g., Pyle et al. 2001; Kohn and Malloy 2004) and thus potentially relate petrogenesis to absolute time. The transition to petrochronology was complete upon recognition that high MSWDs were in fact the expected case for most metamorphic minerals (Kohn 2009). One of the great frontiers for fundamental discovery in the geosciences is earliest Earth (DePaolo et al. 2008). However, investigations of the first five …