NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  1. Content with the tag: “hematite

  2. High Lake Gossan deposit: An Arctic analogue for ancient Martian surficial processes?

    ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 2.1, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 6.1, 7.1
  3. New Evidence for an Earlier Origin of Oxygenic Photosynthesis


    Outcroppings of ancient ocean sediments show deposits of the iron oxide, hematite. CREDIT: HIROSHI OHMOTO

    NAI’s Archean Biosphere Drilling Project supported the acquisition of pristine drill core samples obtained from ancient rocks in Western Australia. New results from those studies, published in the current issue of Nature Geoscience, point toward an earlier start for oxygenic photosynthesis on the early Earth than previously thought.

    An international team of researchers, including members of NAI’s Penn State Team, found hematite crystals and associated minerals preserved in a jasper formation within ancient marine sedimentary rocks. Their interpretation is that the rocks formed in an oxygenated water body 3.46 billion years ago. Because the findings imply the presence...

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