Erosion of Archean continents: The Sm-Nd and Lu-Hf isotopic record of Barberton sedimentary rocks

Abstract

Knowing the composition, nature and amount of crust at the surface of the early Earth is crucial to understanding the early geodynamics of our planet. Yet our knowledge of the Hadean-Archean crust is far from complete, limited by the poor preservation of Archean terranes, and the fact that less attention has been paid to the sedimentary record that tracks erosion of these ancient remnants. To address this problem and get a more comprehensive view of what an Archean continent may have looked like, we investigated the trace element and Sm-Nd, Lu-Hf isotopic records of Archean metasedimentary rocks from South Africa. We focused our study on sandstone and mudstone from drill core in the Fig Tree Group (3.23–3.26Ga) of the Barberton granite-greenstone belt, but also analyzed the 3.4Ga Buck Reef cherts and still older (3.5–3.6Ga) meta-igneous rocks from the Ancient Gneiss Complex, Swaziland.Based on principal component analysis of major and trace element data, the Fig Tree metasedimentary rocks can be classified into three groups: crustal detritus-rich sediments, Si-rich sediments and Ca-, Fe-rich sediments. The detritus-rich sediments have preserved the Sm-Nd and Lu-Hf isotopic signatures of their continental sources, and hence can be used to constrain the composition of crust eroded in the Barberton area in the Paleoarchean period. Based on Sm/Nd ratios, we estimate that this crust was more mafic than today, with an average SiO2 content of 60.5±2wt.%. This composition is further supported by isotopic mixing calculations suggesting that the sedimentary source area contained equal proportions of mafic-ultramafic and felsic rocks. This implies that the Archean crust exposed to weathering was more mafic than today but does not exclude a more felsic composition at depth. Neodymium and Hf crustal residence ages show that the eroded crust was, on average, ∼300–400Ma older than the deposition age of the sediments, which highlights the importance of intracrustal reworking of older crust at ∼3.2Ga in the Barberton area.The Si-rich sediments have slightly positive εNd (t=3.23Ga) but extremely radiogenic εHf (t=3.23Ga), up to +11. Based on analyses of 3.4Ga Buck Reef cherts, we suggest that the radiogenic Hf isotopic signature of the Si-rich sediments can be accounted for by the old chert clasts or detrital silicified rock fragments present in the rocks. The latter have extremely high Lu/Hf ratios such that their εHf values would increase dramatically, by about +100 epsilon units every 100Ma. In the Ca-, Fe-rich sediments, one sample contains carbonate that preserves the typical rare-earth element features of seawater precipitates. The initial Nd isotopic composition of this sample (εNd (t=3.23Ga)= +1.7) is within the range of previous estimates for Archean anoxic seawater.