Thermal history of the H-chondrite parent body: Implications for metamorphic grade and accretionary time-scales

Multiple temperature-age constraints for eight H-chondrite samples have been used to provide insight into the thermal history of their parent-body through combination with numerical models of thermal evolution assuming internal heating by 26Al and conductive cooling. The effect of spreading accretion out over time is the principal focus of this work. A wide range of body size and date of accretion is systematically tested for different values of accretion rate in order to quantify and illustrate the parameter space that is consistent with the available thermo-chronological data. We conclude that the H-chondrite samples considered have a thermal history consistent with a parent body that at some stage had a concentric ‘onion-shell’ internal structure. That body had a radius no larger than 130 km, and accretion most probably took place over a time interval on the order of 0.0–0.2 Myr, approximately 2 Myr after CAI condensation. In any case, the time interval of accretion is unlikely to have been more than 0.5 Myr supporting evidence in favour of rapid accretion, possibly through reassembly of the fragments of an earlier generation of bodies. Furthermore, the H-chondrites studied here are inferred to have come from a wide depth range within the body where they experienced metamorphism, indicating that preservation of the onion-shell structure is unlikely. The presence of an insulating regolith does not modify this conclusion, as appropriate thermal histories for the three H6 samples considered cannot be reproduced at depths near the surface. Asteroid 6-Hebe may be the parent body of the H-chondrites, but the high bulk density of the latter is difficult to reconcile with a ‘rubble-pile’ structure of pure H-chondrite material. Finally, optimized thermal histories are used to constrain the temperatures characterizing boundaries between petrological types (800, 1000, and 1140 K for the H3/4, H4/5, and H5/6 boundaries respectively). In detail, the type 6 samples studied here are inferred to have experienced a similar peak temperature (on the order of 1180 K), but spent different times at that temperature, while samples of lower metamorphic grade experienced different peak temperature, but spent more or less the same time within 10 K of peak temperature (on the order of 1 Ma). These results constitute a quantitative framework within which variations in petrographic and textural properties may be interpreted.