  Radioisotopic ages for meteorites and their components provide constraints on
the evolution of small bodies: timescales of accretion, thermal and aqueous
metamorphism, differentiation, cooling and impact metamorphism. Realising that
the decay heat of short-lived nuclides (e.g. 26Al, 60Fe), was the main heat
source driving differentiation and metamorphism, thermal modeling of small
bodies is of utmost importance to set individual meteorite age data into the
general context of the thermal evolution of their parent bodies, and to derive
general conclusions about the nature of planetary building blocks in the early
solar system. As a general result, modelling easily explains that iron
meteorites are older than chondrites, as early formed planetesimals experienced
a higher concentration of short-lived nuclides and more severe heating.
However, core formation processes may also extend to 10 Ma after formation of
Calcium-Aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs). A general effect of the porous nature
of the starting material is that relatively small bodies (< few km) will also
differentiate if they form within 2 Ma after CAIs. A particular interesting
feature to be explored is the possibility that some chondrites may derive from
the outer undifferentiated layers of asteroids that are differentiated in their
interiors. This could explain the presence of remnant magnetization in some
chondrites due to a planetary magnetic field.
