A morphogram for silica-witherite biomorphs and its application to microfossil identification in the early earth rock record

Geobiology
J RouillardM A van Zuilen

Abstract

Archean hydrothermal environments formed a likely site for the origin and early evolution of life. These are also the settings, however, were complex abiologic structures can form. Low-temperature serpentinization of ultramafic crust can generate alkaline, silica-saturated fluids in which carbonate-silica crystalline aggregates with life-like morphologies can self-assemble. These "biomorphs" could have adsorbed hydrocarbons from Fischer-Tropsch type synthesis processes, leading to metamorphosed structures that resemble carbonaceous microfossils. Although this abiogenic process has been extensively cited in the literature and has generated important controversy, so far only one specific biomorph type with a filamentous shape has been discussed for the interpretation of Archean microfossils. It is therefore critical to precisely determine the full distribution in morphology and size of these biomorphs, and to study the range of plausible geochemical conditions under which these microstructures can form. Here, a set of witherite-silica biomorph synthesis experiments in silica-saturated solutions is presented, for a range of pH values (from 9 to 11.5) and barium ion concentrations (from 0.6 to 40 mmol/L BaCl2 ). Under these varying...Continue Reading

References

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Citations

Nov 28, 2019·Proceedings. Biological Sciences·Sean McMahon
Dec 27, 2019·Geobiology·Joti RouillardMark A van Zuilen
Aug 23, 2019·Nature·Emmanuelle J Javaux
Feb 6, 2021·Astrobiology·Joti RouillardJuan-Manuel Garcia-Ruiz
Jan 30, 2021·Nature Communications·Tian GanShuhai Xiao
Apr 19, 2020·Physics of Life Reviews·Juan Manuel García-RuizWolfgang Bach

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
optical microscopy
Scanning Electron Microscopy
Elastic Light Scattering

Software Mentioned

ImageJ
MATLAB Statistics Toolbox
image J
visualminte Q
matlab

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