Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2017
Publication Title
Nature Communications
Volume
8
Issue
1
First page number:
1
Last page number:
7
Abstract
Clay mineral-bearing locations have been targeted for martian exploration as potentially habitable environments and as possible repositories for the preservation of organic matter. Although organic matter has been detected at Gale Crater, Mars, its concentrations are lower than expected from meteoritic and indigenous igneous and hydrothermal reduced carbon. We conducted synthesis experiments motivated by the hypothesis that some clay mineral formation may have occurred under oxidized conditions conducive to the destruction of organics. Previous work has suggested that anoxic and/or reducing conditions are needed to synthesize the Fe-rich clay mineral nontronite at low temperatures. In contrast, our experiments demonstrated the rapid formation of Fe-rich clay minerals of variable crystallinity from aqueous Fe3+ with small amounts of aqueous Mg2+. Our results suggest that Fe-rich clay minerals such as nontronite can form rapidly under oxidized conditions, which could help explain low concentrations of organics within some smectite-containing rocks or sediments on Mars. © 2017 The Author(s).
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File Size
1920 KB
Language
English
Rights
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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Repository Citation
Gainey, S. R.,
Hausrath, E. M.,
Adcock, C. T.,
Tschauner, O.,
Hurowitz, J. A.,
Ehlmann, B. L.,
Xiao, Y.,
Bartlett, C. L.
(2017).
Clay mineral formation under oxidized conditions and implications for paleoenvironments and organic preservation on Mars.
Nature Communications, 8(1),
1-7.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01235-7