Experimental diagenesis: insights into aragonite to calcite transformation of Arctica islandica shells by hydrothermal treatment

• Published in: Biogeosciences
• Main Authors: Casella, LA, Griesshaber, E, Yin, X, Ziegler, A, Mavromatis, V, Mueller, D, Ritter, A-C, Hippler, D, Harper, E. M., Dietzel, M, Immenhauser, A, Schoene, BR, Angiolini, L, Schmahl, WW
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: European Geosciences Union 2017
• Subjects: 04 - Palaeobiology; Arctica islandica
• Online Access: http://eprints.esc.cam.ac.uk/4103/; http://eprints.esc.cam.ac.uk/4103/1/bg-14-1461-2017.pdf; http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2\&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP\&SrcAuth=LinksAMR\&KeyUT=WOS:000398193100001\&DestLinkType=FullRecord\&DestApp=ALL_WOS\&UsrCustomerID=940c5db9f6a527ba8e12659dac275555; https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-14-1461-2017

Abstract. Biomineralised hard parts form the most important physical fossil record of past environmental conditions. However, living organisms are not in thermodynamic equilibrium with their environment and create local chemical compartments within their bodies where physiologic processes such as biomineralisation take place. In generating their mineralised hard parts, most marine invertebrates produce metastable aragonite rather than the stable polymorph of CaCO3, calcite. After death of the organism the physiological conditions, which were present during biomineralisation, are not sustained any further and the system moves toward inorganic equilibrium with the surrounding inorganic geological system. Thus, during diagenesis the original biogenic structure of aragonitic tissue disappears and is replaced by inorganic structural features.