ArticleGeobiology2018
A morphogram for silica-witherite biomorphs and its application to microfossil identification in the early earth rock record.
Article in Geobiology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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16 citing papers in PubMed, 66 citations in OpenAlex.
- Experimental diagenesis reveals preservation of biosignatures in filamentous sulfur mats under hydrothermal conditions.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Morphological Sensitivity to pH of Silica and Chalk Nanocrystalline Self-Organized Biomorphs.Small science · 2024Article
- Computational assessment of the potential of cross-catalytic coprecipitating systems for the bottom-up design of nanocomposites.Nanoscale advances · 2023Article
- Influence of Intramineral Proteins on the Growth of Carbonate Crystals Using as a Scaffold Membranes of Ratite Birds and Crocodiles Eggshells.Membranes · 2023Article
- Tonian carbonaceous compressions indicate that Horodyskia is one of the oldest multicellular and coenocytic macro-organisms.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Metabolically diverse primordial microbial communities in Earth's oldest seafloor-hydrothermal jasper.Science advances · 2022Article
- Influence of Abiotic Factors in the Chemical Origin of Life: Biomorphs as a Study Model.ACS omega · 2021Review
- An Alternative Approach for Assessing Biogenicity.Astrobiology · 2021Article
- Cryptic terrestrial fungus-like fossils of the early Ediacaran Period.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Nanoscale Anatomy of Iron-Silica Self-Organized Membranes: Implications for Prebiotic Chemistry.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2021Article
- The Complex Molecules Detector (CMOLD): A Fluidic-Based Instrument Suite to Search for (Bio)chemical Complexity on Mars and Icy Moons.Astrobiology · 2020Article
- Article
- Earth's earliest and deepest purported fossils may be iron-mineralized chemical gardens.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Cyanobacteria evolution: Insight from the fossil record.Free radical biology & medicine · 2019Review
- Review
- A morphogram for silica-witherite biomorphs and its application to microfossil identification in the early earth rock record.Geobiology · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Archean hydrothermal environments formed a likely site for the origin and early evolution of life. These are also the settings, however, were complex abiologic structures can form. Low-temperature serpentinization of ultramafic crust can generate alkaline, silica-saturated fluids in which carbonate-silica crystalline aggregates with life-like morphologies can self-assemble. These "biomorphs" could have adsorbed hydrocarbons from Fischer-Tropsch type synthesis processes, leading to metamorphosed structures that resemble carbonaceous microfossils. Although this abiogenic process has been extensively cited in the literature and has generated important controversy, so far only one specific biomorph type with a filamentous shape has been discussed for the interpretation of Archean microfossils. It is therefore critical to precisely determine the full distribution in morphology and size of these biomorphs, and to study the range of plausible geochemical conditions under which these microstructures can form. Here, a set of witherite-silica biomorph synthesis experiments in silica-saturated solutions is presented, for a range of pH values (from 9 to 11.5) and barium ion concentrations (from 0.6 to 40 mmol/L BaCl
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