Hugh's Journal Success
3 December 2010
Professor Hugh Rollinson, Professor of Earth Sciences here at Derby.
Professor Hugh Rollinson, Professor of Earth Sciences at Derby, has had an article published in the international journal Geology.
'Geology' is quite high profile, particularly in the USA. It is published by the Geological Society of America and it publishes short punchy articles, often scientifically controversial. Nature Geoscience is also set to feature Hugh's work in the January edition. Below is a flavour of Hugh's research:
Hot Archaean ridge, Geology 38, 1083-1086 (2010).
The creation of the continental crust and underlying mantle on the early Earth is thought to be related to mantle plume activity. However, geochemical modelling suggests that mid-ocean ridges may have played an important role in forming the Archaean continents.
Ancient continental rocks, formed more than three billion years ago, are today observed along side rocks formed in an unusually buoyant mantle.
Their formation has therefore been attributed to hot mantle plumes. Using geochemical and mineralogical data Hugh Rollinson at the University of Derby demonstrates that these buoyant Archaean rocks could have originally formed at mid-ocean ridges, if the ridges were much hotter than those observed on Earth today.
Intense heat from the mid-ocean ridge would promote the formation of extremely thick and dense oceanic crust, leaving the underlying lithosphere unusually buoyant. As the dense oceanic rocks began to subduct and fall into the mantle, pockets of less-dense melt would escape from the oceanic crust, rising up through the already buoyant lithosphere to form the continents.
The formation of continents in the Archaean was therefore coupled to an unusually buoyant lithosphere, a process that is not observed on Earth today.
