By Steve Drury First PUBLISHED ON January 23, 2021
That large, rocky bodies in the Solar System were heavily bombarded by asteroidal debris at the end of the Hadean Eon (between 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago) is apparent from the ancient cratering records that they still preserve and their matching with dating of impact-melt rocks on the Moon.
Being a geologically dynamic planet, the Earth preserves no tangible, indisputable evidence for this Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB), and until quite recently could only be inferred to have been battered in this way. That it actually did happen emerged from a study of tungsten isotopes in early Archaean gneisses from Labrador, Canada (see: Tungsten and Archaean heavy bombardment, August 2002; and Did mantle chemistry change after the late heavy bombardment? September 2009).
Because large impacts deliver such vast amounts of energy in little more than a second (see: Graveyard for asteroids and comets, Chapter 10 in Stepping Stones) they have powerful consequences for the Earth System, as witness the Chicxulub impact off the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico that resulted in a mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period. That seemingly unique coincidence of a large impact with devastation of Earth’s ecosystems seems likely to have resulted from the geology beneath the impact; dominated by thick evaporite beds of calcium sulfate whose extreme heating would have released vast amounts of SO2 to the atmosphere. Its fall-out as acid rain would have dramatically affected marine organisms with carbonate shells.
Impacts on land would tend to expend most of their energy throughout the lithosphere, resulting in partial melting of the crust or the upper mantle in the case of the largest such events.
The further back in time, the greater the difficulty in recognising visible signs of impacts because of erosion or later deformation of the lithosphere. With a single, possible exception, every known terrestrial crater or structure that may plausibly be explained by impact is younger than 2.5 billion years; i.e. they are post-Archaean. Yet rocky bodies in the Solar System reveal that after the LHB the frequency and magnitude of impacts steadily decreased from high levels during the Archaean; there must have been impacts on Earth during that Eon and some may have been extremely large.
In the least deformed Archaean sedimentary sequences there is indirect evidence that they did occur, in the form of spherules that represent droplets of silicate melts (see: Evidence builds for major impacts in Early Archaean; August 2002, and Impacts in the early Archaean; April 2014), some of which contain unearthly proportions of different chromium isotopes (see: Chromium isotopes and Archaean impacts; March 2003).
As regards the search for very ancient impacts, rocks of Archaean age form a very small proportion of the Earth’s continental surface, the bulk having been buried by younger rocks. Of those that we can examine most have been subject to immense deformation, often repeatedly during later times.
There is, however, one possibly surviving impact structure from Archaean times, and oddly it became suspected in one of the most structurally complex areas on Earth; the Akia Terrane of West Greenland.
Aeromagnetic surveys hint at two concentric, circular anomalies centred on a 3.0 billion years-old zone of grey gneisses (see figure) defining a cryptic structure. It is is surrounded by hugely deformed bodies of ultramafic and mafic rocks (black) and nickel mineralisation (red). In 2012 the whole complex was suggested to be a relic of a major impact of that age, the ultramafic-mafic bodied being ascribed to high degrees of impact-induced melting of the underlying mantle. The original proposers backed up their suggestion with several associated geological observations, the most crucial being supposed evidence for shock-deformation of mineral grains and anomalous concentrations of platinum-group metals (PGM).
A multinational team of geoscientists have subjected the area to detailed field surveys, radiometric dating, oxygen-isotope analysis and electron microscopy of mineral grains to test this hypothesis (Yakymchuck, C. and 8 others 2020. Stirred not shaken; critical evaluation of a proposed Archean meteorite impact in West Greenland. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, v. 557, article 116730 (advance online publication); DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2020.116730).
Tectonic fabrics in the mafic and ultramafic rocks are clearly older than the 3.0 Ga gneisses at the centre of the structure. Electron microscopy of ~5500 zircon grains show not a single example of parallel twinning associated with intense shock. Oxygen isotopes in 30 zircon grains fail to confirm the original proposers’ claims that the whole area has undergone hydrothermal metamorphism as a result of an impact. All that remains of the original suggestion are the nickel deposits that do contain high PGM concentrations; not an uncommon feature of Ni mineralisation associated with mafic-ultramafic intrusions, indeed much of the world’s supply of platinoid metals is mined from such bodies. Even if there had been an impact in the area, three phases of later ductile deformation that account for the bizarre shapes of these igneous bodies would render it impossible to detect convincingly.
The new study convincingly refutes the original impact proposal. The title of Yakymchuck et al.’s paper aptly uses Ian Fleming’s recipe for James Bond’s tipple of choice; multiple deformation of the deep crust does indeed stir it by ductile processes, while an impact is definitely just a big shake. For the southern part of the complex (Toqqusap Nunaa), tectonic stirring was amply demonstrated in 1957 by Asger Berthelsen of the Greenland Geological Survey (Berthelsen, A. 1957. The structural evolution of an ultra- and polymetamorphic gneiss-complex, West Greenland. Geologische Rundschau, v. 46, p. 173-185; DOI: 10.1007/BF01802892). Coming across his paper in the early 60s I was astonished by the complexity that Berthelsen had discovered, which convinced me to emulate his work on the Lewisian Gneiss Complex of the Inner Hebrides, Scotland. I was unable to match his efforts.
The Akia Terrane has probably the most complicated geology anywhere on our planet; the original proposers of an impact there should have known better …
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Many thanks to Steve Drury for permission to republish his article and to Bernie Bell for sending it into The Orkney News.
