Granitic Perspectives on the Generation and Secular Evolution of the Continental Crust

Abstract

Every geologist is acquainted with the principle of “uniformitarianism,” which holds that present-day processes are the key to those that operated in the past. But the extent this applies to the processes driving the growth and differentiation of the Earth’s continental crust remains a matter of debate. Unlike its dense oceanic counterpart, which is recycled back into the mantle by subduction within 200 Ma (see Chapter 3.13), the continental crust comprises buoyant quartzofeldspathic materials and is difficult to destroy by subduction. The continental crust is, therefore, the principal record of how conditions on the Earth have changed, and how processes of crust generation have evolved through geological time. It preserves evidence of secular variation in crustal compositions, and thus the way in which the crust has formed throughout Earth’s history. Exploring the nature and origin of these variations is the focus of this chapter. Continental rocks are highly differentiated, and so the crust is enriched in incompatible components compared to the primeval chondritic composition (see Chapter 3.01). Of these, water is perhaps the most relevant, both for the origin and evolution of life, and also for many models of crust generation and differentiation. Similarly, the mass of continental crust is just 0.57% of the silicate Earth, and yet it contains,35% of the potassium (using the crustal composition estimates in Table 1). Continental rocks comprise the buoyant shell that was once thought to float on a basaltic substratum, inferred from the wide distribution of chemically similar continental flood basalts (von Cotta,.