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Age of a Lunar Anorthosite

Liaquat Husain, Oliver A. Schaeffer, John F. Sutter

Abstract

The crystallization age of an Apollo 15 anorthosite rock, 15415,9, returned from the lunar highlands has been measured to be (4.09 +/- 0.19) x 10(9) years. The primitive lunar crust must have been formed in the first 300 to 400 x 10(6) years. The results give some credence to the hypothesis that the primitive lunar surface was molten and large-scale fractional crystallization occurred in the early history of the moon.

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Key concepts: Anorthosite, Geology of the Moon, Fractional crystallization (geology), Credence, Geology, Crust, Lunar mare, Crystallization