Some Speculations Concerning The Abitibi Greenstone Belt As A Possible Analog To The Early Martian Crust

Details Some Speculations Concerning The Abitibi Greenstone Belt As A Possible Analog To The Early Martian Crust Some Speculations Concerning The Abitibi Greenstone Belt As A Possible Analog To The Early Martian Crust

Dec 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufm.p33b1765r&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #P33B-1765

Mathematics

Logic

[0461] Biogeosciences / Metals, [1021] Geochemistry / Composition Of The Oceanic Crust, [1034] Geochemistry / Hydrothermal Systems, [9623] Information Related To Geologic Time / Archean

Scientific paper

The Noachian crust of Mars comprises basaltic and, potentially, komatiitic lavas derived from a hot mantle slightly more reducing and sulfur-rich than that of the Earth. Ultramafic volcanic sequences of the ~2.7Ga Tisdale Group of the Abitibi Greenstone Belt, Ontario, provide a potential analog to these early martian lavas. The Abitibi rocks are a possible source of quartz veins carrying, in places, pyrite, carbonate and gold. These were hydrothermally introduced into volcanic and sedimentary rocks during greenschist metamorphism. Kilometer-scale talc-magnesite zones, resulting from the carbonation of serpentinized ultramafics, may have been the source and seawater, with some magmatic addition, was probably responsible for the pervasive alteration, although the chemical nature of hydrothermal fluids circulating in such piles depends upon the temperature of wall-rock interactions and is largely independent of fluid origin. Any sulfides and gold in unaltered ultramafic putative source rocks may have been lost to the invasive convective fluids. Given high heat flow and the presence of a hydrosphere, hydrothermal convection cells were probably the main mechanism of heat transfer through the crust on both planets. Exploration of the Abitibi belt provides a template for possible martian exploration strategies. Orbital remote sensing indicates that some ultramafic rocks on Mars have also been serpentinized and isolated areas of magnesite have been recently discovered, overlying altered mafic crust, with characteristic ridges at scales of a few hundred meters. While cogent arguments have been made favoring sedimentary exhalative accumulations of hydrothermal silica of the kind that are known to harbor bacteria on our own planet, no in situ siliceous sinters or even quartz veins have been identified with certainty on Mars. Here, we report on the mineralogic and visible to infrared spectral characteristics of mafic and ultramafic lithologies at Abitibi for comparison to locations on Mars where hydrothermal activity has been proposed.

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