Subduction Origin of the Nb Anomaly in Earth’s Oldest Continents Abstract. Earth is unique in the solar system in having plate tectonics, which controls the growth of life-sustaining continents and the habitability of ou

Did Earth’s first continents form in subduction zones?

Me and Alan Hastie think so!

Why? Read in detail here in Journal of Petrology doi.org/10.1093/petr...

The take home: Melting @ < 60km ➡️ No rutile ➡️ no Nb anomaly ➡️ no continental crust signature.

Rutile + garnet only stable at ≥60 km.

Only just realising there's an alternative to twitter trash!