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I'm curious about the change in metal availability. From the paper "The Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum (PETM)" ... "Additionally, many metal abundances (incl
by marcus_holmes 7y ago
I'm curious about the change in metal availability. From the paper
"The Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum (PETM)"
...
"Additionally, many metal abundances (including V,Zn, Mo, Cr) spiked during the event "
How does metal availability increase like this?
Obviously, our industry will increase metal availability, because we spend lots of time and energy digging through other geological layers and dragging all their metal deposits into ours. But how could this happen naturally?
- wolfram74 7y agoOn a global, semi-uniform scale? Not sure. But locally, maybe intense vulcanism? The Siberian Traps[1] were bringing up material from below ground on a scale that's kind of hard to fathom. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps
- marcus_holmes 7y agothat makes sense, though that was a 2-million-year event, so maybe something smaller ;)
- pasabagi 7y agoI would assume that V, Zn, Mo, and Cr form some compound with carbon dioxide that isn't soluble - so it collects in sediment. Or, it could be the acidity levels? I think it's often the case that metal concentrations come from the release of oxygen from primitive micro-organisms, as the oxygen reacts with elemental metals to form layers of insoluble metal oxides on the seabed.