Thermal constraints on the early history of the H-chondrite parent body reconsidered

Reconstructions of the early thermal history of the H-chondrite parent body have focused on two competing hypotheses. The first posits an undisturbed thermal evolution in which the degree of metamorphism increases with depth, yielding an “onion-shell” structure. The second posits an early fragmentation–reassembly event that interrupted this orderly cooling process. Here, we test these hypotheses by collecting a large number of previously published closure age and cooling rate data and comparing them to a suite of numerical models of thermal evolution in an idealized parent body. We find that the onion-shell hypothesis, when applied to a parent body of radius 75–130 km with a thermally insulating regolith, is able to explain 20 of the 21 closure age data and 62 of the 71 cooling rates. Furthermore, six of the eight meteorites for which multiple data (at different temperatures) are available, can be accounted for by onion-shell thermal histories. We therefore conclude that no catastrophic disruption of the H-chondrite parent body occurred during its early thermal history. The relatively small number of data not explained by the onion-shell hypothesis may indicate the formation of impact craters on the parent body which, while large enough to excavate all petrologic types, were small enough to leave the parent body largely intact. Impact events fulfilling these requirements would likely have produced transient crater diameters at least 30% of the parent body diameter.