Author
Listed:
- Mizuho Koike
(Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)
- Ryoichi Nakada
(Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC))
- Iori Kajitani
(Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
The University of Tokyo)
- Tomohiro Usui
(Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
Tokyo Institute of Technology)
- Yusuke Tamenori
(Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute)
- Haruna Sugahara
(Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)
- Atsuko Kobayashi
(Tokyo Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology)
Abstract
Understanding the origin of organic material on Mars is a major issue in modern planetary science. Recent robotic exploration of Martian sedimentary rocks and laboratory analyses of Martian meteorites have both reported plausible indigenous organic components. However, little is known about their origin, evolution, and preservation. Here we report that 4-billion-year-old (Ga) carbonates in Martian meteorite, Allan Hills 84001, preserve indigenous nitrogen(N)-bearing organics by developing a new technique for high-spatial resolution in situ N-chemical speciation. The organic materials were synthesized locally and/or delivered meteoritically on Mars during Noachian age. The carbonates, alteration minerals from the Martian near-surface aqueous fluid, trapped and kept the organic materials intact over long geological times. This presence of N-bearing compounds requires abiotic or possibly biotic N-fixation and ammonia storage, suggesting that early Mars had a less oxidizing environment than today.
Suggested Citation
Mizuho Koike & Ryoichi Nakada & Iori Kajitani & Tomohiro Usui & Yusuke Tamenori & Haruna Sugahara & Atsuko Kobayashi, 2020.
"In-situ preservation of nitrogen-bearing organics in Noachian Martian carbonates,"
Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 11(1), pages 1-7, December.
Handle:
RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-15931-4
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15931-4
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-15931-4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.