Even thick sequences of sediments in marine depositional basins contain only limited segments of the record of chlorophyll diagenesis. Extracts from Pleistocene deep-sea sediments (Baker and Smith, 1973a) yielded extensive information concerning early chlorin transformations. Investigations of marine sediments of Pliocene and Miocene age resulted in the first reports of free base porphyrins occ...

Recent descriptions of blood vessels recovered from dinosaur bones have raised many questions regarding tissue diagenesis and the associated chemical pathways that led to preservation. Previous analyses have identified preserved elastin and collagen proteins in a variety of specimens [1][2]. In particular, the mechanical, chemical, and thermal susceptibility of fibrillar collagen is partially d...

The oxidation and reduction that occur during early diagenesis of sediments has been studied in the interstitial waters of a rapidly accumulating sedimentary sequence from the Mediterranean margin of Spain. A series of reactions that are mediated by progressively lower free energy derived from oxidation of organic matter is evident in the sedimentary sequence. Iron and manganese are rapidly red...

High-resolution transmission electron microscopy of biogenic carbonate minerals is hampered by a lack of stability during exposure to the electron beam. However, aragonite in bivalve shells may be successfully imaged using a modification of the 'minimal-exposure technique' of Williams and Fisher (1970). Diffraction patterns taken before and after beam exposure indicate that the aragonite remain...

We present a framework for interpreting the carbon isotopic composition of sedimentary rocks, which in turn requires a fundamental reinterpretation of the carbon cycle and redox budgets over Earth's history. We propose that authigenic carbonate, produced in sediment pore fluids during early diagenesis, has played a major role in the carbon cycle in the past. This sink constitutes a minor compon...

This autobiography covers the past 55 years of my research in geochemistry. I try to show how chemical principles can be applied to a wide variety of geological problems, ranging from iron sulfide mineralogy, to carbonate chemistry in the oceans, to silicate mineral surface chemistry during weathering, to biogeochemical changes during early diagenesis, to plants and weathering, to models for th...

We study the shape and growth rate of necks between sintered spheres with dissolutionprecipitation dynamics in the reaction-limited regime. We determine the critical shape that separates those initial neck shapes that can sinter from those that necessarily dissolve, as well as the asymptotic evolving shape of sinters far from the critical shape. We compare our results with past results for the ...