back to Department home page

“Rare Earth Plots” and the
Concentrations of Rare Earth Elements (REE)
in Chondritic Meteorites

Randy L. Korotev

The following sets of values have been used in the geochemical literature for the purpose of preparing plots of “chondrite-normalized” concentrations of REE against atomic number or inverse ionic radius.  Note that the first 6 columns, which are the oldest data, are values for ordinary chondrites. Thus historically, “REE plots” have been based on volatile-free chondrites.  Columns 7, 8, and 10 which probably contain more precise and more representative data than columns 1-6, are for CI chondrites, thus the values are systematically lower.  

In my experience, the values of Anders and Grevesse (1989; column 10) consistently give the smoothest "REE patterns" for the wide variety of rock types we have analyzed in our laboratory.  However, we only obtain data for 7 or 8 of the REE (e.g., Fig A1 of Korotev, 1996).  To maintain consistency with older literature, I use the values of column 11, which are the CI values of Anders and Grevesse (column 10) multiplied by the factor 1.36.   This factor leads to exactly 0.20 µg/g Sm and values for all REE in the vicinity of those of columns 1-6.

  

Concentration values in µg/g (ppm)
column 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
source: Haskin Haskin Wakita Naka-
mura		 Masuda
(Leedy)		 Laul Evensen A&E Boyn-
ton		 A&G A&G
×1.36
Y 1.96             1.44   1.56 2.12
± 0.09                    
La 0.330 0.331 0.34 0.329 0.378 0.34 0.2446 0.236 0.310 0.2347 0.319
± 0.013 0.010                  
Ce 0.88 0.86 0.91 0.865 0.976 0.85 0.6379 0.616 0.808 0.6032 0.820
± 0.01 0.03                  
Pr 0.112 - 0.121     0.12 0.09637 0.0929 0.122 0.0891 0.121
± 0.005                    
Nd 0.60 0.67 0.64 0.630 0.716 0.64 0.4738 0.457 0.600 0.4524 0.615
± 0.01 0.25                  
Sm 0.181 0.184 0.195 0.203 0.230 0.195 0.1540 0.149 0.195 0.1471 0.2000
± 0.006 0.006                  
Eu 0.069 0.068 0.073 0.0770 0.0866 0.073 0.05802 0.056 0.0735 0.0560 0.0761
± 0.001 0.001                  
Gd 0.249 0.255 0.26 0.276 0.311 0.26 0.2043 0.197 0.259 0.1966 0.267
± 0.011 0.028                  
Tb 0.047 - 0.047     0.047 0.03745 0.0355 0.0474 0.0363 0.0493
± 0.001                    
Dy - 0.317 0.30 0.343 0.390 0.30 0.2541 0.245 0.322 0.2427 0.330
±   0.005                  
Ho 0.070 0.072 0.078     0.078 0.05670 0.0547 0.0718 0.0556 0.0755
± 0.001 0.010                  
Er 0.200 0.21 0.20 0.225 0.255 0.20 0.1660 0.160 0.210 0.1589 0.216
± 0.005 0.05                  
Tm 0.030 - 0.032     0.032 0.02561 0.0247 0.0324 0.0242 0.0329
± 0.002                    
Yb 0.200 0.215 0.22 0.220 0.249 0.22 0.1651 0.159 0.209 0.1625 0.221
± 0.007 0.008                  
Lu 0.034 0.0324 0.034 0.0339 0.0387 0.034 0.02539 0.0245 0.0322 0.0243 0.0330
± 0.002 0.0005                  

REFERENCES and NOTES

1)  Haskin L.A., Wildeman T.R., and Haskin M.A. (1968)
"An accurate procedure for the determination of the rare earths by neutron activation"
J. Radioanal. Chem. 1, 337-348.

Composite of nine (ordinary?) chondrites
2)  Haskin L.A., Helmke P.A., Paster T.P., and Allen R.O. (1971)
"Rare earths in meteoritic, terrestrial, and lunar matter"
In Activation Analysis in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry, A. Brunfelt and E. Steinnes, eds., Proc. NATO Conf. on Activation Analysis in Geochemistry, pp. 201-218, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo.

Another analysis of chondrite composite of Haskin et al. (1968)
3)  Wakita H., Rey P., and Schmitt R. A. (1971)
Elemental abundances of major, minor, and trace elements in Apollo 11 lunar rocks, soil and core samples. Proc. Apollo 11 Lunar Sci. Conf., 1685-1717.

"composite of 12 chondrites," data in caption to Fig. 1
4)  Nakamura N. (1974)
"Determination of REE, Ba, Fe, Mg, Na, and K in carbonaceous and ordinary chondrites"
Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 38, 757-775.

Average of ten ordinary chondrites
5)  Masuda A., Nakamura N., and Tanaka T. (1973)
"Fine structure of mutually normalized rare-earth patterns of chondrites"
Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 37, 239-248.

Leedy chondrite (L6)
6)  Laul J.C. (1979)
"Neutron activation analysis of geologic materials"
Atomic Energy Rev. 17, 603-695. (Fig. 20 caption, p. 683)

Same as values of Wakita et al. (1971), except for Ce
7)  Evensen N.M., Hamilton P.J., and O'Nions R.K. (1978)
"Rare-earth abundances in chondritic meteorites"
Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 42, 1199-1212.

"CI avg.", best estimate of unfractionated chondrites, many literature analyses
8)  Anders E. and Ebihara M. (1982)
"Solar-system abundances of the elements"
Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 46, 2363-2380.  (Table 6)

Essentially, values of Evensen et al. (1978) divided by 1.0366, except Tb (/1.055)

These values also favored by Wasson J.T. (1985) Meteorites: Their Record of Early Solar-System History, 267 pp., Freeman, New York. (Table D-1) and Wasson and Kallemeyn (1988) "Composition of chondrites," Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A 325, 535-544.
9)  Boynton W. V. (1985) 
Chapter 3. Cosmochemistry of the rare earth elements: Meteorite studies, In Rare Earth Element Geochemistry (P. Henderson, ed.), (Developments in Geochemistry 2), pp. 115-1522, Elsevier, Amsterdam.

Values of Evensen et al. multiplied by 1.267 to be consistent with the average values of Haskin et al. (1968) and Wakita et al. (1972)
10)  Anders E. and Grevesse N. (1989)
"Abundances of the elements: Meteoritic and solar"
Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 53, 197-214.

"Mean C1 Chondr." of Table 1
11)  Values of Anders & Grevesse times 1.3596.  

This factor gives Sm = 0.2000 µg/g and results in values for all REE in the vicinity those for the early ordinary chondrite composites.

Some references in which this approach is taken are listed below:

Korotev R. L. (1996) A self-consistent compilation of elemental concentration data for 93 geochemical reference samples. Geostandards Newsletter 20, 217–245.

Korotev R. L. (1996) On the relationship between the Apollo 16 ancient regolith breccias and feldspathic fragmental breccias, and the composition of the prebasin crust in the Central Highlands of the Moon. Meteorit. Planet. Sci. 31, 403–412.
Last revised:
20-Dec-2005 		 
| Overview | People | Contact | Academics | Courses |
| Research | What's New | Resources & Facilities |
| Webmaster|
back to 
home page