39Ar–40Ar age and thermal history of martian dunite NWA 2737

We report an 39Ar–40Ar age determination of a whole rock sample of the olivine-rich, martian meteorite Northwest Africa (NWA) 2737. Those extractions releasing 0–48% of the 39Ar define an 39Ar–40Ar isochron age of 160–190 Ma, when evaluated in various ways. Higher temperature extractions show increasing ages that eventually exceed the reported Sm–Nd age of 1.42 Ga. At least part of this excess 40Ar may have been shock implanted from the martian atmosphere. We considered two possible interpretations of the Ar–Ar isochron age, utilizing the measured Ar diffusion characteristics of NWA 2737 and a thermal model, which relates Ar diffusion to the size of a cooling object after shock heating. One interpretation, that 40Ar was only partially degassed by an impact event ~ 11 Ma ago (the CRE age), appears possible only if NWA 2737 was shock-heated to temperatures > 600 °C and was ejected from Mars as an object a few 10 s of cm in diameter. The second interpretation, which we prefer, is that NWA experienced an earlier, more intense shock event, which left it residing in a warm ejecta layer, and a less intense event ~ 11 Ma ago, which ejected it into space. Our evaluation would require NWA 2737 to have been heated by this first event to a temperature of ~ 300–500 °C and buried in ejecta to a depth of ~ 1–20 m. These conclusions are compared to model constraints on meteorite ejection from Mars reported in the literature. The second, Mars-ejection impact ~ 11 Ma ago probably heated NWA 2737 to no more than ~ 400 °C. NWA 2737 demonstrates that some martian meteorites probably experienced shock heating in events that did not eject them into space.