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Mesosiderite formation on asteroid 4 Vesta by a hit-and-run collision

Nature Geoscience volume 12, pages 510–515 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Collision and disruption processes of protoplanetary bodies in the early Solar System are key to understanding the genesis of diverse types of main-belt asteroids. Mesosiderites are stony-iron meteorites that formed by the mixing of howardite–eucrite–diogenite-like crust and molten core materials and provide unique insights into the catastrophic break-up of differentiated asteroids. However, the enigmatic formation process and the poorly constrained timing of metal–silicate mixing complicate the assignment to potential parent bodies. Here we report the high-precision uranium–lead dating of mesosiderite zircons by isotope dilution thermal ionization mass spectrometry to reveal an initial crust formation 4,558.5 ± 2.1 million years ago and metal–silicate mixing at 4,525.39 ± 0.85 million years ago. The two distinct ages coincide with the timing of the crust formation and a large-scale reheating event on the eucrite parent body, probably the asteroid Vesta. This chronological coincidence corroborates that Vesta is the parent body of mesosiderite silicates. Mesosiderite formation on Vesta can be explained by a hit-and-run collision 4,525.4 million years ago that caused the thick crust observed by NASA’s Dawn mission and explains the missing olivine in mesosiderites, howardite–eucrite–diogenite meteorites and vestoids.

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Fig. 1: 207Pb–206Pb dates for mesosiderite zircons.
Fig. 2: Histograms and kernel density estimates of mesosiderite zircon dates and various dates of basaltic eucrite.
Fig. 3: Mesosiderite formation on Vesta in an internal-origin model that adopts a hit-and-run collision.
Fig. 4: Crust evolution in the south pole region.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank H. Genda for insightful discussions. M.K.H. acknowledges support from JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship for Research Abroad (No. 27-699), J.F.W. from ETH Zurich postdoctoral fellowship program (FEL-14-09), Y.-J.L., and M.S. from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC Grant agreement No. [279779] and the Swiss National Science Foundation (Project 200021_149282), and A.Y. from NIPR Research Project KP307.

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Author notes

  1. Yi-Jen Lai

    Present address: Macquarie GeoAnalytical, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ETH Zürich, Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology, Zürich, Switzerland

    Makiko K. Haba, Jörn-Frederik Wotzlaw, Yi-Jen Lai & Maria Schönbächler

  2. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

    Makiko K. Haba

  3. National Institute of Polar Research, Tokyo, Japan

    Akira Yamaguchi

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Contributions

M.K.H. and M.S. designed the research. M.K.H., Y.-J.L. and A.Y. prepared the zircon samples. J.-F.W. performed U–Pb dating of zircons. M.K.H. took the lead in writing the manuscript. All the authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Makiko K. Haba.

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Haba, M.K., Wotzlaw, JF., Lai, YJ. et al. Mesosiderite formation on asteroid 4 Vesta by a hit-and-run collision. Nat. Geosci. 12, 510–515 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0377-8

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