The Earth has an average surface temperature of about 15°C, which is, in terms of planetary conditions suitable for life, the equivalent of winning the cosmic lottery. Yet, without an atmosphere filled with biological waste gases capable of retaining heat (O2, N2O, CH4, CO2), the average temperature of the planet would be about −18°C (Smil 2002), making the present diversity and abundance of li...

Heavy rare earth elements (HREE) are dominantly mined from the weathering crusts of granites in South China. Although weathering processes occur globally, no economic HREE resources of this type have yet been found outside China. Here, we report the occurrence of unidentified REE minerals in the granites from South Chinese deposits. They contain high levels of both HREE and light REE, but are s...

It is unclear why atmospheric oxygen remained trapped at low levels for more than 1.5 billion years following the Paleoproterozoic Great Oxidation Event. Here, we use models for erosion, weathering and biogeochemical cycling to show that this can be explained by the tectonic recycling of previously accumulated sedimentary organic carbon, combined with the oxygen sensitivity of oxidative weather...

The behaviour of 25 major and trace elements, together with mineral changes, has been examined in a deep weathering profile on the Cammenellis granite, Cornwall. The bulk chemical and mineralogical composition of the regolith shows only minor changes from the parent rock indicating a low degree of chemical weathering. However, within the regolith marked differences occur between the fine fracti...

Mineralogy, microbial ecology, and mineral weathering in the subsurface are an intimately linked biogeochemical system. Although bacteria have been implicated indirectly in the accelerated weathering of minerals, it is not clear if this interaction is simply the coincidental result of microbial metabolism, or if it represents a speciŽ c strategy offering the colonizing bacteria a competitive ec...

The Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT), ~34Ma, marks a tipping point in the long-term Cenozoic greenhouse to icehouse climate transition. Paleorecords reveal stepwise rapid cooling and ice growth across the EOT tightly coupled to a transient benthic δC excursion and a major and permanent deepening of the carbonate compensation depth (CCD). Based on biogeochemical box modeling, Merico et al. (200...

Introduction and Motivation: Mineral grains on the surfaces of airless planetary bodies like the Moon are subjected to continuous radiation processing from solar energetic ions and also experience micrometeorite impact events. Together these processes alter the morphology, chemistry, and microstructure of surface particles and are collectively known as space weathering [1]. The optical properti...

Residual fuel oil spilled into the sea from the Eshkol power station on 8 February, 1998 contaminated about 9 km of the foreshore north of the Ashdod harbour. A study of the aliphatic, polycyclic alkane and polyaromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) composition of the spilled oil shows rapid weathering in the early stages followed by gradual slowdown after about three months. Weathering of isoprenoids and ...