Accretion regions of meteorite parent bodies inferred from a two-endmember isotopic mixing model

TL;DR

This study develops a two-endmember isotopic mixing model to infer the origins and accretion zones of noncarbonaceous meteorite parent bodies, revealing their diverse feeding zones and implications for early solar system dynamics.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel quantitative mixing model based on multiple isotopic anomalies to determine the accretion materials and feeding zones of NC bodies.

Findings

Identified distinct feeding zones for NC bodies.

Indicated a large population of interlopers in the asteroid belt.

Suggested more circular orbits of Jupiter and Saturn during terrestrial planet formation.

Abstract

The diverse isotopic anomalies of meteorites demonstrate that the protoplanetary disk was composed of components from different stellar sources, which mixed in the disk and formed the planetary bodies. However, the origin of the accretion materials of different planetary bodies and the cosmochemical relationship between these bodies remain ambiguous. The noncarbonaceous (NC) planetary bodies originate from the inner solar system and have isotopic compositions distinct from those of the carbonaceous (CC) bodies. We combined Ca, Ti, Cr, Fe, Ni, Mo, and Ru isotopic anomalies to develop a quantitative two-endmember mixing model of the NC bodies. Correlations of the isotopic anomalies of different elements with different cosmochemical behaviors originate from the mixing of two common endmembers. Using this mixing model, we calculated the isotopic anomalies of NC bodies for all the considered isotopes, including the isotopic anomalies that are difficult to measure or have been altered by spallation processes. The mixing proportion between the two endmembers in each NC body has been calculated as a cosmochemical parameter, which represents the compositional relationship of the accretion materials between the NC bodies. Using the calculated mixing proportions, the feeding zones of the NC bodies could be estimated. The estimated feeding zones of NC bodies indicate a large population of interlopers in the main asteroid belt and an indigenous origin of Vesta. The feeding zones estimated in different planet formation scenarios indicate that the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn during formation of terrestrial planets were likely to be more circular than their current ones.