In Situ Fe and S isotope analyses in pyrite from the 3.2 Ga Mendon Formation (Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa): Evidence for early microbial iron reduction.

On the basis of phylogenetic studies and laboratory cultures, it has been proposed that the ability of microbes to metabolize iron has emerged prior to the Archaea/Bacteria split. However, no unambiguous geochemical data supporting this claim have been put forward in rocks older than 2.7-2.

Organism motility in an oxygenated shallow-marine environment 2.1 billion years ago.

Evidence for macroscopic life in the Paleoproterozoic Era comes from 1.8 billion-year-old (Ga) compression fossils [Han TM, Runnegar B (1992) 257:232-235; Knoll et al. (2006) 361:1023-1038], Stirling biota [Bengtson S et al.

Breaking the long-standing morphological paradigm: Individual prisms in the pearl oyster shell grow perpendicular to the c-axis of calcite.

Cross-sections of calcitic prismatic layers in mollusk shells, cut perpendicular to growth direction, reveal well-defined polygonal shapes of individual "grains" clearly visible by light and electron microscopy. For several kinds of shells, it was shown that the average number of edges in an individual prism approaches six during the growth process. Taking into account the rhombohedral symmetry of calcite, often presented in hexagonal axes, all this led to the long-standing opinion that calcitic prisms grow along the c-axis of calcite.

Assessing kinetic fractionation in brachiopod calcite using clumped isotopes.

Brachiopod shells are the most widely used geological archive for the reconstruction of the temperature and the oxygen isotope composition of Phanerozoic seawater. However, it is not conclusive whether brachiopods precipitate their shells in thermodynamic equilibrium. In this study, we investigated the potential impact of kinetic controls on the isotope composition of modern brachiopods by measuring the oxygen and clumped isotope compositions of their shells.

Influence of glass composition on secondary ion mass spectrometry instrumental mass fractionation for Si and Ca isotopic analyses.

Rationale: In situ secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) analysis requires the use of standards to unravel the instrumental mass fractionation (IMF) induced by the analytical procedures. Part of this IMF might be caused by the nature of the sample and the differences in composition and structure between the sample and the standards. This "matrix effect" has been tentatively corrected for by using standards with chemical compositions equivalent to the samples, or by the empirical use of chemical parameters.