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Article: Occurrence of marcasite in an organic-rich Holocene estuarine mud.
- Article from:
- Australian Journal of Soil Research
- Article date:
- September 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 CSIRO Publishing. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Introduction
Marcasite is the mineral dimorph of pyrite, sharing the same chemical composition of Fe[S.sub.2]. Diagenic pyrite is common in marine and estuarine sediments (Berner 1970), whereas diagenic marcasite has only been reported in Cretaceous and Tertiary aged marine and estuarine influenced sedimentary materials as a rare secondary mineral (Dixon et al. 1982; White et al. 1991). Both minerals however, are common in hydrothermal sulfide-ore deposits (Vaughan and Lennie 1991).
Like pyrite, marcasite contains [S.sub.2.sup.2-] units in the crystal structure and has [Fe.sup.2+] in octahedral co-ordination (Vaughan and Lennie 1991). For pyrite, the ...