Dr Emma Tomlinson, Funded Investigator in iCRAG and Associate Professor in Geology, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council Consolidator Grant worth up to €2 million.
Dr Tomlinson’s project will seek to answer the long-standing question: “how did the cratonic lithosphere form?” The formation of the Archean lithospheric mantle was a key event in Earth history, resulting in the construction of the first continents, termed cratons, and laying the foundations of our habitable planet. The lithosphere formed by extensive mantle melting, however, there are conflicting models for the environment in which melting took place. Efforts to understand the formation of the cratonic lithosphere are hampered by a lack of quantitative information on the depth of mantle melting and the original thickness of the Archean lithosphere.
How the cratonic lithosphere formed and its subsequent evolution have profound implications, not only for our understanding of the origin of the continents, but also for the onset of modern plate tectonics and the thermal evolution of the Earth’s mantle.
Entitled LITH03: Quantifying the formation and evolution of the Archaean lithospheric mantle, will address this question in two ways: firstly using evidence from rare samples that preserve information on their formation conditions coupled with insights from partial melting experiments and thermodynamic modelling; and secondly by unravelling the processes that have modified the mineralogy and thermal structure of the lithosphere since its formation.
LITHO3 is an innovative and ambitious project that will have a significant impact on our understanding of the long-term evolution of the Earth and other rocky planets in our solar system.