-Multivariate statistical analyses of geochemical, mineralogical, and cation-exchange capacity (CEC) data from a Venezuelan oil well were used to construct a model which relates elemental concentrations to mineral abundances. An r-mode factor analysis showed that most of the variance could be accounted for by four independent factors and that these factors were related to individual mineral com...

The mineralogy of terrestrial planets evolves as a consequence of a range of physical, chemical, and biological processes. In pre-stellar molecular clouds, widely dispersed microscopic dust particles contain approximately a dozen refractory minerals that represent the starting point of planetary mineral evolution. Gravitational clumping into a protoplanetary disk, star formation, and the result...

Introduction: Wark-Lovering rims (WLR) consist of a sequence of mono-mineral layers a few microme-ters thick (hibonite, perovskite, spinel, melilite, anor-thite, pyroxene, olivine) surrounding most coarse-grained Ca-Al-rich inclusions (CAIs) [1]. Despite numerous studies, their formation is still not well understood. Based on their mineralogy [1], their rare earth element (REE) content [2] or t...