Diamonds contain evidence of the mantle rocks that helped buoy and grow the ancient supercontinent Gondwana from below, according to new research from a team of scientists led by Suzette Timmerman—formerly of the University of Alberta and now at the University of Bern—and including Carnegie’s Steven Shirey, Michael Walter, and Andrew Steele. Their findings, published in Nature, demonstrate that superdeep diamonds can provide a window through space and time into the supercontinent growth and formation process.
Diamonds contain evidence of the mantle rocks that helped buoy and grow the ancient supercontinent Gondwana from below, according to new research from a team of scientists led by Suzette Timmerman—formerly of the University of Alberta and now at the University of Bern—and including Carnegie’s Steven Shirey, Michael Walter, and Andrew Steele. Their findings, published in Nature, demonstrate that superdeep diamonds can provide a window through space and time into the supercontinent growth and formation process.
For billions of years, Earth’s landmasses have been ripped apart and smashed back together by plate tectonics, periodically forming giant supercontinents. This formation process results from large-scale convection of the planet’s mantle. But the records of these events are poorly preserved, because the oceanic crust is young and continually sinks beneath the planet’s surface by a process called subduction, while the continental crust only provides a limited view of Earth’s deep workings.
Surprisingly, the research team was able to show that superdeep diamonds that formed between 300 and 700 kilometers below Earth’s surface can reveal how material was added to the base of a once-mighty supercontinent.
