Thermal and impact histories of reheated group IVA, IVB, and ungrouped iron meteorites and their parent asteroids

Abstract

Abstract- The microstructures of six reheated iron meteorites-two IVA irons, Maria Elena (1935), Fuzzy Creek; one IVB iron, Ternera; and three ungrouped irons, Hammond, Babb's Mill (Blake's Iron), and Babb's Mill (Troost's Iron)-were characterized using scanning and transmission electron microscopy, electron-probe microanalysis, and electron backscatter diffraction techniques to determine their thermal and shock history and that of their parent asteroids. Maria Elena and Hammond were heated below approximately 700-750 °C, so that kamacite was recrystallized and taenite was exsolved in kamacite and was spheroidized in plessite. Both meteorites retained a record of the original Widmanstätten pattern. The other four, which show no trace of their original microstructure, were heated above 600-700 °C and recrystallized to form 10-20 ?m wide homogeneous taenite grains. On cooling, kamacite formed on taenite grain boundaries with their close-packed planes aligned. Formation of homogeneous 20 ?m wide taenite grains with diverse orientations would have required as long as approximately 800 yr at 600 °C or approximately 1 h at 1300 °C. All six irons contain approximately 5-10 ?m wide taenite grains with internal microprecipitates of kamacite and nanometer-scale M-shaped Ni profiles that reach approximately 40% Ni indicating cooling over 100-10,000 yr. Un-decomposed high-Ni martensite (?2) in taenite-the first occurrence in irons-appears to be a characteristic of strongly reheated irons. From our studies and published work, we identified four progressive stages of shock and reheating in IVA irons using these criteria: cloudy taenite, M-shaped Ni profiles in taenite, Neumann twin lamellae, martensite, shock-hatched kamacite, recrystallization, microprecipitates of taenite, and shock-melted troilite. Maria Elena and Fuzzy Creek represent stages 3 and 4, respectively. Although not all reheated irons contain evidence for shock, it was probably the main cause of reheating. Cooling over years rather than hours precludes shock during the impacts that exposed the irons to cosmic rays. If the reheated irons that we studied are representative, the IVA irons may have been shocked soon after they cooled below 200 °C at 4.5 Gyr in an impact that created a rubblepile asteroid with fragments from diverse depths. The primary cooling rates of the IVA irons and the proposed early history are remarkably consistent with the Pb-Pb ages of troilite inclusions in two IVA irons including the oldest known differentiated meteorite (Blichert-Toft et al. 2010).