Patterns of biomediated CaCO3 crystal bushes in hot spring deposits

In the Eryuan hot spring, located in south China, the vent pool is covered with “crystal bushes”, up to 2 cm high, 1 cm in diameter, that grew in the biofilms that thrive in the spring waters that have a pH of 7.5 and a temperature of 88 °C. The biofilms are formed largely of phototrophic purple bacteria and green bacteria. Growth of the crystal bushes, which are formed of aragonite crystals (wheat-sheaves, radiating clusters), rhombohedral and dodecahedral calcite crystals, amorphous CaCO3 (ACC), and opal-A, is attributed to precipitation in the micro-domains of the biofilms where physiochemical conditions can vary on the sub-micron scale. There is no evidence that the calcite was formed through recrystallization of the metastable aragonite and most of the calcite crystals developed as mesocrystals that are characterized by incomplete growth and porous crystal faces.With the onset of diagenesis, there is a high probability that the crystal bushes will lose much of their identity as the (1) biofilm is lost through decay, (2) ACC and aragonite change to calcite, (3) identities of the mesocrystals and incompletely formed crystals are lost through continued precipitation and/or recrystallization, and (4) porous crystal faces are converted to solid crystal faces. This means that most of the features considered indicative of biomediated calcite precipitation have a low preservation potential and that the recognition of biomediated precipitates in old spring deposits may remain problematical.