Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Liu W
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7502741 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20200831 37
The oxidation states of manganese minerals in the geological record have been interpreted as proxies for the evolution of molecular oxygen in the Archean eon. Here we report that an Archean manganese mineral, rhodochrosite (MnCO<sub>3</sub>), can be photochemically oxidized by light under anoxic, abiotic conditions. Rhodochrosite has a calculated bandgap of about 5.4 eV, corresponding to light energy centering around 230 nm. Light at that wavelength would have been present on Earth's surface in ...[more]