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Mineralogical Environments of the Hadean Eon: Rare Elements Were Ubiquitous in Surface Sites of Rock-Forming Minerals

Rare Elements Ubiquitous on Rock-Forming Mineral Surfaces in the Hadean

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Book cover Prebiotic Chemistry and the Origin of Life

Part of the book series: Advances in Astrobiology and Biogeophysics ((ASTROBIO))

Abstract

Surfaces of condensed inorganic phases, including minerals and volcanic glass, are often invoked in origins-of-life models as potential catalysts, templates, reactants, or protective environments for critical prebiotic reactions. Consequently, mineralogists have compiled inventories of early Earth minerals and their reactive surface sites. These lists of probable near-surface minerals present during Earth’s Hadean Eon (>4.0 Ga) collate more than 400 species, including phases in meteorites, the igneous minerals of Earth’s earliest differentiated crust, magma and fumarole (hot vapor deposited) minerals of volcanic deposits, and a host of minerals that formed through interactions with Earth’s emerging hydrosphere. These varied minerals incorporate more than two dozen chemical elements that are critical to biochemistry. However, minerals with high concentrations of several elements thought to be essential for the chemistry of life’s origins and/or subsequent metabolism, including B, P, V, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, and Mo, were volumetrically trivial, if not completely absent, from that Hadean mineral inventory. Consequently, it may not be reasonable to invoke minerals such as borates or molybdates in origins-of-life scenarios. We propose an alternative possibility: common rock-forming minerals with modest concentrations (typically 10s to 1000s of parts-per-million levels) of trace elements may have been critical to origins-of-life chemistry. Accordingly, to complement lists of Hadean mineral species we catalog trace and minor elements in such ubiquitous minerals as olivine, high-Ca pyroxene, plagioclase feldspars, and magnetite, as well as volcanic glass. We conclude that varied reactive surface sites with all elements essential to life’s origins were abundant in Hadean geochemical environments.

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Acknowledgments

Studies of mineral evolution and mineral ecology have been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the W. M. Keck Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the NASA Astrobiology Institute ENIGMA team, a private foundation, and the Carnegie Institution for Science. Any opinions, findings, or recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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    Robert M. Hazen & Shaunna M. Morrison

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    Anna Neubeck

  2. UK Centre for Astrobiology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Sean McMahon

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Hazen, R.M., Morrison, S.M. (2021). Mineralogical Environments of the Hadean Eon: Rare Elements Were Ubiquitous in Surface Sites of Rock-Forming Minerals. In: Neubeck, A., McMahon, S. (eds) Prebiotic Chemistry and the Origin of Life. Advances in Astrobiology and Biogeophysics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81039-9_2

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