The Crazy Mixed-Up Lunar Crust

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The Crazy Mixed-Up Lunar Crust
The lunar surface has 43 large, ancient impact
basins that excavated and distributed a large
amount of material across the entire Moon,
affecting the geochemistry of the crust.
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The Crazy Mixed-Up Lunar Crust
Petro and Pieters mapped the horizontal and
vertical distribution of well-mixed basin ejecta
on a 1x1º global grid, showing contrasting
patterns on the nearside versus farside.
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The Crazy Mixed-Up Lunar Crust
The cumulative effects of basin formation
directly influenced the observed geochemical
terranes, outlined on the map.

• PKT has the highest amount of deeply-mixed basin
  ejecta
• FHT and SPAT received smaller amounts of
  shallowly-mixed ejecta from the 42 (post-SPA)
  basins
• Surprisingly, geochemical signatures survived
  despite all the horizontal and vertical mixing of
  materials during the basin formation era early in
  lunar history