Events

The Persistence and Importance of Spinels: An Extraterrestrial Perspective

Spinel-family minerals are ubiquitous in nature. Because they are extremely persistent in the geologic record, various spinels are important petrogenetic indicators of historical processes. This will be illustrated with four examples: 1) industrial-scale tracing of the history of meteorite bombardment through the Phanerozoic, 2) pre-solar grains recording stellar nucleosynthesis before our Sun was born, 3) high-temperature condensates revealing oxygen isotopic evolution of the earliest Solar System in the oldest rocks formed there, and, to greater depth, 4) magnesioferrite spinels condensed from the Chicxulub (K-Pg) impact vapor plume and what they tell us about impact geochemistry.