Modern terrestrial mantle-derived rocks display a rich diversity of isotopic compositions that have been key to understanding the assembly of the silicate Earth over the last 2-3 billion years. Parallel to these advancements was an increasing understanding that Archean-aged cratonic rocks provide a window into foundational terrestrial processes that occurred in the first 1-2 billion years of Earth history. The study and application of these distinct records remained mostly independent until statistical and instrumental precision improved enough to measure meaningful heterogeneity in short-lived radiogenic isotopes (especially ¹⁴²Nd and ¹⁸²W) among young mantle-derived rocks. Recent developments in the study of ocean island basalts have revealed that some early domains in Earth’s mantle have never been fully homogenized and may also preserve information about foundational Earth processes.

The ¹⁸²W/¹⁸⁴W records of Archean and modern rocks are especially complimentary and reflect differing perspectives on core formation and subsequent late accretion processes. On the other hand, the ¹⁴²Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd signatures of some ocean island basalts may reflect the same global differentiation event preserved by many less altered cratonic rocks of Archean age. Continuing advancement in analytical precision will increase the potential to integrate the study of Archean-aged and modern rocks as mutually beneficial tools to understand processes such as core and dynamo formation, crustal differentiation, plate tectonics, and impact events. In turn, a detailed understanding of our planet’s early history in these respects is critical to identify which terrestrial exoplanets have the geological propensity to host life.

Recently, high precision isotope measurements revealed anomalies of the short-lived ¹⁸²W and ¹⁴²Nd system in modern Ocean Island Basalts (OIBs) [1, 2]. These anomalies indicate the presence of an ancient primordial component within OIB sources, however, their origin remains enigmatic. Core-mantle interaction [2] or the involvement of early differentiated and isolated silicate reservoirs [e.g. 3] are the most plausible scenarios to account for the observed isotope anomalies. To better understand the involvement of primordial components within OIBs, comparing plume heads and tails might be key to answering this question since the amount of incorporated material changes during the lifetime of plumes [4].
Here, we present new ¹⁸²W and ¹⁴²Nd data for basalts from the Deccan Large Igneous Province (DLIP; 65Ma). By investigating Pb and ¹⁴³Nd isotopes as well as W-Th-Ta systematics, we investigated the role of crustal and lithospheric contamination during plume ascent on the short-lived isotope compositions. Our combined ¹⁴²Nd-¹⁸²W data for pristine DLIP lavas fall within the range of Réunion lavas [1, 5] that were interpreted as late-stage eruptions tapping the Deccan-Réunion plume. Consequently, while the short-lived isotope compositions can be altered due to lithosphere assimilation, pristine DLIP lavas display the same short-lived isotope compositions as their respective tail. In contrast to previous studies [4], this argues for a consistent entrainment of the same primordial components into a plume head and tail.

[1]Peters et al. (2021), G-Cubed. [2]Mundl et al. (2017), Science. [3]Tusch et al. (2022), PNAS. [4] Jones et al. (2019), EPSL. [5]Jansen et al. (2022), EPSL.

The formation of oceanic crust at mid-ocean ridges is one of the dominant processes in the chemical differentiation of our planet. Oceanic crust formed at fast-spreading ridges exhibits a relatively uniform seismic stratigraphy and is regarded as layered and relatively homogeneous. Because of the lack of in-situ exposures at the base of recent oceanic crust, existing models on the geodynamics of the deep processes during crustal accretion have never been tested directly using natural samples. The ICDP Oman Drilling Project penetrated at two sites the crust/mantle boundary in the Oman ophiolite, the best analogue for fast-spreading crust on land (drill cores CM1, CM2). We started a study investigating a continuing and densely spatial resolved sample set of both drill cores in order to shed light on the nature of this poorly understood zone at the base of the Oman paleocrust. The drill cores CM1 and CM2 cover the upper mantle harzburgites at the bottom, followed by a 90 m thick massive dunite layer with layered gabbros on top. Ni and Mg# in olivine as well as Cr#, Mg# and trace elements in chrome spinel were analyzed by EPMA and fs-LA-ICP-MS. The data reveals a homogeneous harzburgitic upper mantle composition and a dunite section showing decreasing Mg#, implying an increase in differentiation towards the top. We conclude that the zone of massive dunite was formed as a first cumulative crystallization event of a mantle-derived, primitive MORB melt, while the residual melt was fed into the stockwork system of the layered gabbros.