A thickening event of the continental lithosphere ca. 2.2 billion years ago revealed by Nb/Ta-Dy/Yb systematics in basaltic rocks

Abstract

Continental lithosphere thickness significantly influences Earth’s tectonic style, the stabilization of cratons, the compositions of intraplate volcanic rocks, and specific types of metallogenesis. Although the Archean cratons currently boast the thickest lithosphere among Earth’s continents, the evolution of its thickness throughout geological history remains inadequately comprehended. Intraplate small-volume volcanoes, typical products of magmatic activities within continents with thick lithosphere on the modern Earth, were rarely observed until the early Paleoproterozoic, possibly due to the high mantle temperature and insufficient thickness of the continental lithosphere. Here we show that the modern intraplate continental basalts exhibit distinctive signatures of both elevated Nb/Ta and Dy/Yb ratios, setting them apart from basalts found in arc, rift, and plume settings. Our statistical analysis of a geochemical database of basalts worldwide spanning the past 3.5 billion years indicates that modern-like intraplate continental basalts have become extensive since ca. 2.2 Ga. We attribute the emergence of intracontinental basalts to a lithospheric thickening event within the Archean craton continents, resulting from horizontal compression of the lithosphere during the assembly of the Nuna supercontinent.

Keywords

Lithospheric thickening / Intracontinental basalts / Plate tectonics / Supercontinent

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Ningpan Chai: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft. Zhiqi Zhao: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing. Xiaoke Li: Data curation, Formal analysis. Jun Xiao: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing. Zhangdong Jin: Validation, Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Western Light-Key Laboratory Cooperative Research Cross-Team Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences (xbzg-zdsys-202309), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB40020502) and the Shaanxi Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (2020JC-030).

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