Discovery of coesite from the martian shergottite Northwest Africa 8657
Sen Hu, Yang Li, Lixin Gu, Xu Tang, Ting Zhang, Akira Yamaguchi, Yangting Lin, Hitesh Changela
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta
In Press, Journal Pre-proof, Available online 22 July 2020
“We report occurrences of coesite in a martian meteorite, expending previously-reported silica polymorphs such as stishovite (El Goresy et al., 2000), seifertite (Goresy et al., 2008; Sharp et al., 1999), and post-stishovite (El Goresy et al., 2000). The coesite was found in the shock-induced melt regions of NWA 8657, usually coexisting with deformed quartz and silica glass. Three morphological types of coesite have been identified: (I) in a silica-maskelynite assemblage, (II) needle grains, and (III) granular grains embedded in maskelynite. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) shows that all types of coesite appear distributed in silica glass and/or nano-phase maskelynite. The stishovite-like morphology of Type II coesite and the presence of deformed quartz suggest coesite to have inverted from stishovite during decompression. The impact-induced peak pressures and temperatures are estimated at ∼ 18-30 GPa and ∼ 2000 ℃ respectively, based on static high pressure experiments (Langenhorst and Deutsch, 2012; Zhang et al., 1996). The polymorphs aggregates of silica in NWA 8657 indicate that the shock-induced melts in this meteorite cooled slower than those in other stishovite-bearing martian meteorites, but fast enough to preserve coesite.”
