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Huang, Shichun

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Huang

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Shichun

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Huang, Shichun

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2013 - 20142

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Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.c7dec5d3-ccc4-4ed0-9378-e6c59ba3ae4f

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    Missing Lead and High 3He/4He in Ancient Sulfides Associated with Continental Crust Formation
    (Nature Publishing Group, 2014) Huang, Shichun; Lee, Cin-Ty A.; Yin, Qing-Zhu
    Major terrestrial reservoirs have Pb isotopes more radiogenic than the bulk silicate Earth. This requires a missing unradiogenic Pb reservoir, which has been argued to reside in the lower continental crust or dissolved in the core. Chalcophile element studies indicate that continent formation requires the formation of sulfide-bearing mafic cumulates in arcs. Because Pb, but not U, partitions into sulfides, we show that continent formation must have simultaneously generated time-integrated unradiogenic Pb reservoirs composed of sulfide-bearing cumulates, now recycled back into the mantle or stored deep in the continental lithosphere. The generation of such cumulates could also lead to coupled He-Pb isotopic systematics because 4He is also produced during U-Th-Pb decay. Here, we show that He may be soluble in sulfide melts, such that sulfide-bearing cumulates would be enriched in both Pb and He relative to U and Th, “freezing” in He and Pb isotopes of the ambient mantle at the time of sulfide formation. This implies that ancient sulfide-bearing cumulates would be characterized by unradiogenic Pb and He isotopes (high-3He/4He). These primitive signatures are usually attributed to primordial, undifferentiated mantle, but in this case, they are the very imprint of mantle differentiation via continent formation.
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    Large Pt Anomaly in the Greenland Ice Core Points to a Cataclysm at the Onset of Younger Dryas
    (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013) Petaev, Michail; Huang, Shichun; Jacobsen, Stein; Zindler, Alan
    One explanation of the abrupt cooling episode known as the Younger Dryas (YD) is a cosmic impact or airburst at the YD boundary (YDB) that triggered cooling and resulted in other calamities, including the disappearance of the Clovis culture and the extinction of many large mammal species. We tested the YDB impact hypothesis by analyzing ice samples from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) ice core across the Bølling-Allerød/YD boundary for major and trace elements. We found a large Pt anomaly at the YDB, not accompanied by a prominent Ir anomaly, with the Pt/Ir ratios at the Pt peak exceeding those in known terrestrial and extraterrestrial materials. Whereas the highly fractionated Pt/Ir ratio rules out mantle or chondritic sources of the Pt anomaly, it does not allow positive identification of the source. Circumstantial evidence such as very high, superchondritic Pt/Al ratios associated with the Pt anomaly and its timing, different from other major events recorded on the GISP2 ice core such as well-understood sulfate spikes caused by volcanic activity and the ammonium and nitrate spike due to the biomass destruction, hints for an extraterrestrial source of Pt. Such a source could have been a highly differentiated object like an Ir-poor iron meteorite that is unlikely to result in an airburst or trigger wide wildfires proposed by the YDB impact hypothesis.