Origin and significance of Si and O isotope heterogeneities in Phanerozoic, Archean, and Hadean zircon

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Significance The crust or its chemically weathered derivatives likely served as a substrate for the origin of life, which could have occurred by 4.1 Ga. Yet no known bona fide terrestrial rocks from this time remain. Studies have thus turned to geochemical signatures within detrital zircons from this time. While zircons do not directly record low-temperature weathering processes, they inherit isotopic information upon recycling and remelting of sediment. We developed a method to fingerprint the identity of material involved in water–rock interactions >4 Ga, bolstered by a large Si and O isotopic dataset of more modern zircon samples. The data presented here provide evidence for chemical sediments, such as cherts and banded iron formations on Earth >4 Ga.