{"id":223829,"date":"2025-10-23T04:23:44","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T09:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/geochemical-research-could-help-identify-microbial-activity-in-earths-rock-record-and-perhaps-in-martian-sediments"},"modified":"2025-10-23T04:23:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T09:23:44","slug":"geochemical-research-could-help-identify-microbial-activity-in-earths-rock-record-and-perhaps-in-martian-sediments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/geochemical-research-could-help-identify-microbial-activity-in-earths-rock-record-and-perhaps-in-martian-sediments","title":{"rendered":"Geochemical research could help identify microbial activity in Earth\u2019s rock record and perhaps in Martian sediments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/geochemical-research-could-help-identify-microbial-activity-in-earths-rock-record-and-perhaps-in-martian-sediments.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Because oxygen-bearing sulfate minerals trap and preserve signals from Earth\u2019s atmosphere, scientists closely study how they form. Sulfates are stable over billions of years, so their oxygen isotopes are seen as a time capsule, reflecting atmospheric conditions while they were evolving on early Earth\u2014and possibly on its planetary neighbor Mars.<\/p>\n<p>A new study led by a University of Utah geochemist examines how <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/sulfate\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">sulfate<\/a> forms when pyrite, commonly known as \u201cfool\u2019s gold,\u201d is oxidized in environments teeming with microbes versus those without them. The researchers focused on Spain\u2019s Rio Tinto, a contaminated river passing through a region where iron and copper were mined for thousands of years.<\/p>\n<p>The paper titled, \u201cTriple-oxygen isotopic evidence of prolonged direct bioleaching of pyrite with O<sub>2<\/sub>,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/linkinghub.elsevier.com\/retrieve\/pii\/S0012821X25004376\" target=\"_blank\">appears<\/a> in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Because oxygen-bearing sulfate minerals trap and preserve signals from Earth\u2019s atmosphere, scientists closely study how they form. Sulfates are stable over billions of years, so their oxygen isotopes are seen as a time capsule, reflecting atmospheric conditions while they were evolving on early Earth\u2014and possibly on its planetary neighbor Mars. A new study led by [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-chemistry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}