Thermal history and origin of the IVB iron meteorites and their parent body

Abstract

We have determined metallographic cooling rates of 9 IVB irons by measuring Ni gradients 3 μm or less in length at kamacite–taenite boundaries with the analytical transmission electron microscope and by comparing these Ni gradients with those derived by modeling kamacite growth. Cooling rates at 600–400 °C vary from 475 K/Myr at the low-Ni end of group IVB to 5000 K/Myr at the high-Ni end. Sizes of high-Ni particles in the cloudy zone microstructure in taenite and the widths of the tetrataenite rims, which both increase with decreasing cooling rate, are inversely correlated with the bulk Ni concentrations of the IVB irons confirming the correlation between cooling rate and bulk Ni. Since samples of a core that cooled inside a thermally insulating silicate mantle should have uniform cooling rates, the IVB core must have cooled through 500 °C without a silicate mantle. The correlation between cooling rate and bulk Ni suggests that the core crystallized concentrically outwards. Our thermal and fractional crystallization models suggest that in this case the radius of the core was 65 ± 15 km when it cooled without a mantle. The mantle was probably removed when the IVB body was torn apart in a glancing impact with a larger body. Clean separation of the mantle from the solid core during this impact could have been aided by a thin layer of residual metallic melt at the core-mantle boundary. Thus the IVB irons may have crystallized in a well-mantled core that was 70 ± 15 km in radius while it was inside a body of radius 140 ± 30 km.