| Summary: | This work seeks to use the chemical, isotopic, and mineralogical characteristics of secondary carbonate minerals produced during brief aqueous events to identify the conditions of the aqueous environment in which they formed. Liquid water near the surface of Mars is subject to either rapid freezing and/or evaporation. These processes are also active on Earth, and produce secondary minerals that have complex chemical, mineralogical, and isotopic textures and compositions that can include covariant relationships between Delta C-13 (sub VPDB) and delta O-18 (sub VSMOW). The extremely well studied four billion year old carbonates preserved in martian meteorite ALH 84001 also show covariant delta C-13 and delta O-18 compositions, but these variations are manifested on a micro-scale in a single thin section while the variation observed so far in terrestrial carbonates is seen between different hand samples.
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