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Diagenetic origin of quartz silt in mudstones and implications for silica cycling

Nature volume 406, pages 981–985 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

Mudstone—the most abundant sedimentary rock type1, composed primarily of clay- or silt-sized particles—contains most of the quartz found in sedimentary rocks2. These quartz grains, which are chemically and mechanically resistant and therefore preserve their characteristics well, have long been considered to be derived from the continental crust1. Here we analyse quartz silt from black shales in the eastern USA, dating back to the Late Devonian period (about 370 million years ago), using backscattered electron and cathodoluminescence imaging and measure oxygen isotopes with an ion probe. Our results indicate that up to 100% of the quartz silt in our samples does not originate from the continental crust. Instead, it appears to have precipitated early in diagenesis in algal cysts and other pore spaces3, with silica derived from the dissolution of opaline skeletons of planktonic organisms, such as radiolaria and diatoms. Transformation of early diatoms into in situ quartz silt might explain the time gap between the earliest fossil occurrences of diatoms about 120 Myr ago4 and molecular evidence for a much earlier appearance between 266 or even 500 Myr ago5,6. Moreover, if many other mudstone successions show similarly high proportions of in situ precipitated—rather than detrital—quartz silt, the sedimentary record in mudstones may have been misinterpreted in the past, with consequences for our estimates of palaeoproductivity as well as our perceptions of the dynamics and magnitude of global biogeochemical cycling of silica.

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Figure 1: Quartz grains in a silt layer from Devonian mudstone succession.
Figure 2: Detrital quartz silt with pore-filling diagenetic quartz.
Figure 3: Several generations of diagenetic quartz growth in algal cysts.
Figure 4: Quartz silt grains in mudstone matrix with several growth generations.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the Geoscience Research Program, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, US Department of Energy with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by Lockheed Martin Energy Research Corp., the National Science Foundation, and the Donors of the Petroleum Research Fund, administered by the American Chemical Society.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, 76019 , Texas, USA

    Jürgen Schieber & Dave Krinsley

  2. Department of Geological Sciences University of Oregon, Eugene, 97403 , Oregon, USA

    Dave Krinsley

  3. Chemical and Analytical Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, PO Box 2008, Oak Ridge, 37831-6365, Tennessee, USA

    Lee Riciputi

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  1. Jürgen Schieber
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  3. Lee Riciputi
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Correspondence to Jürgen Schieber.

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Schieber, J., Krinsley, D. & Riciputi, L. Diagenetic origin of quartz silt in mudstones and implications for silica cycling. Nature 406, 981–985 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35023143

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