Abstract

Several geological evidences, such as tidal rhythmites and bivalve shells, allow to track back the evolution paths of both the major semiaxis of the Moon's orbit and the Earth's spin rate. However, the data is scarce and with large uncertainty and the orbital evolution of the Moon is still controversial. The aim of this work is to evaluate how significant could have been the effect of bodily tides on the Earth's mantle thermal evolution. To this end, different thermal models of the Earth's interior were proposed. We explore plate tectonics and stagnant lid regimes. These models take into account both tidal and radiogenic heat sources. In order to compute tidal dissipation, we made use of three realistic rheological models of Earth mantle and proposed three different dynamical evolution paths for the lunar major semiaxis and terrestrial length of day. It was found that the impact of tidal interaction could have been specially appreciable on the first hundreds million of years of the Earth's history, provided that the mantle was at a higher temperature. In addition, we found that thermal evolution of Earth's interior is mainly controlled by the rheological behavior of the mantle, which controls the amount of tidal heat produced, and by the dynamical evolution of the Earth-Moon system.