Brief introduction of the paper
The evolution of life is very dependent on the supply of nutrients. Many nutrients necessary for life come from the erosion and weathering of the mainland, and the erosion flux of the mainland is largely controlled by orogenic belts. Researcher Tang Ming and researcher Shen Bing cooperated with Professor Chu Xu of the University of Toronto and researcher Hao Jihua of China University of Science and Technology to reconstruct the thickness change of the earth's active crust in the past 4.5 billion years by using the Eu anomaly in detrital zircon, thus obtaining a continuous orogenic record on a large time scale.
The results show that there was a long-term orogenic quiet period in the middle of the earth until Neoproterozoic. The mountain-building silence in the middle age of the earth may eventually lead to the continuous lack of global marine nutrients and the decline of atmospheric oxygen concentration, thus seriously hindering the emergence and evolution of complex life.
Brief introduction of the author
Tang Ming is a researcher (liberal arts young scholar) at Peking University Institute of Ground and Air Research. 2011June graduated from Nanjing university with a bachelor's degree in geochemistry; 20 16 Graduated from the University of Maryland in May with a doctorate in geochemistry, and did postdoctoral research at Rice University in the United States. The main research directions are the formation and evolution of continental crust, Eu anomaly of continental crust and oceanic crust, Li isotope and in-situ geochemical analysis. At present, as the first author, he has published papers in internationally renowned academic journals in the field of geosciences, such as Science, Geology, EPSL and GCA. 20 19 Joined Peking University College of Earth and Space Sciences. In 2020, he won the "Alpine Young Scientist Award".
Tang Ming has made internationally influential work in the formation and evolution of continental crust, the core field of earth science. The main research results are as follows: (1) For the first time, the transition group metals in terrigenous clastic sedimentary rocks are used to invert the changes of continental upper crust composition, and the emergence of intermediate-acid continental crust and the start-up time of plate tectonics are limited to about 3 billion years; The geochemical study of deep crustal accumulation reveals the mechanism of the evolution sequence of calc-alkaline magma, which provides a theoretical basis for the hypothesis that orogeny controls land formation. The hypothesis of garnet redox sieve is put forward, which provides a new idea for understanding redox mineralization in mainland and surface. Studying the diffusion mechanism of lithium in zircon and perfecting the multi-mechanism parallel diffusion theory will provide a basis for the application of zircon lithium velocimeter in geological process and improve the spatial resolution of lithium isotope analysis in micro-area by an order of magnitude.