{"id":19934,"date":"2022-08-11T02:46:37","date_gmt":"2022-08-10T18:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/media-release\/study-finds-evidence-that-giant-meteorite-impacts-created-the-continents\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T09:25:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T01:25:15","slug":"study-finds-evidence-that-giant-meteorite-impacts-created-the-continents","status":"publish","type":"media-release","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/media-release\/study-finds-evidence-that-giant-meteorite-impacts-created-the-continents\/","title":{"rendered":"Study finds evidence that giant meteorite impacts created the continents"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Curtin research has provided the strongest evidence yet that Earth\u2019s continents were formed by giant meteorite impacts that were particularly prevalent during the first billion years or so of our planet\u2019s four-and-a-half-billion year history.<\/p>\n

Dr Tim Johnson, from Curtin\u2019s\u00a0School of Earth and Planetary Sciences<\/a>,\u00a0said the idea that the continents originally formed at sites of giant meteorite impacts had been around for decades, but until now there was little solid evidence to support the theory.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy examining tiny crystals of the mineral zircon in rocks from the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia, which represents Earth\u2019s best-preserved remnant of ancient crust, we found evidence of these giant meteorite impacts,\u201d Dr Johnson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudying the composition of oxygen isotopes in these zircon crystals revealed a \u2018top-down\u2019 process starting with the melting of rocks near the surface and progressing deeper, consistent with the geological effect of giant meteorite impacts.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur research provides the first solid evidence that the processes that ultimately formed the continents began with giant meteorite impacts, similar to those responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, but which occurred billions of years earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Johnson said understanding the formation and ongoing evolution of the Earth\u2019s continents was crucial given that these landmasses host the majority of Earth\u2019s biomass, all humans and almost all of the planet\u2019s important mineral deposits.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot least, the continents host critical metals such as lithium, tin and nickel, commodities that are essential to the emerging green technologies needed to fulfil our obligation to mitigate climate change,\u201d Dr Johnson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese mineral deposits are the end result of a process known as crustal differentiation, which began with the formation of the earliest landmasses, of which the Pilbara Craton is just one of many.<\/p>\n

\u201cData related to other areas of ancient continental crust on Earth appears to show patterns similar to those recognised in Western Australia. We would like to test our findings on these ancient rocks to see if, as we suspect, our model is more widely applicable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Johnson is affiliated with The Institute for Geoscience Research (TIGeR), Curtin\u2019s flagship earth sciences research institute.<\/p>\n

The paper, \u2018Giant impacts and the origin and evolution of continents<\/em>\u2019, was published in Nature <\/em>and is available online here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Curtin research has provided the strongest evidence yet that Earth\u2019s continents were formed by giant meteorite impacts that were prevalent during the first billion years or so of the planet’s history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4307,"featured_media":14303,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":3,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,40],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-19934","media-release","type-media-release","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-and-global-community","category-research","category-technology"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":[{"title":"","qualification":"","link":"","description":"","faculty":""}],"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}},"experts":false},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/resized-Pilbara-Craton.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Lucien","last_name":"Wilkinson","display_name":"Lucien Wilkinson"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/19934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/media-release"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/19934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19934"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=19934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}