Manganese mineralogy and diagenesis in the sedimentary rock record

Oxidation of manganese (II) to manganese (III,IV) demands oxidants with very high redox potentials; consequently, manganese oxides are both excellent proxies for molecular oxygen and highly favorable electron acceptors when oxygen is absent. The first of these features results in manganese-enriched sedimentary rocks (manganese deposits, commonly Mn ore deposits), which generally correspond to the availability of molecular oxygen in Earth surface environments. And yet because manganese reduction is promoted by a variety of chemical species, these ancient manganese deposits are often significantly more reduced than modern environmental manganese-rich sediments. We document the impacts of manganese reduction and the mineral phases that form stable manganese deposits from seven sedimentary examples spanning from modern surface environments to rocks over 2 billion years old. Integrating redox and coordination information from synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy and X-ray microprobe imaging with scanning electron microscopy and energy and wavelength-dispersive spectroscopy, we find that unlike the Mn(IV)-dominated modern manganese deposits, three manganese minerals dominate these representative ancient deposits: kutnohorite (CaMn(CO3)2), rhodochrosite (MnCO3), and braunite (Mn(III)6Mn(II)O8SiO4). Pairing these mineral and textural observations with previous studies of manganese geochemistry, we develop a paragenetic model of post-depositional manganese mineralization with kutnohorite and calcian rhodochrosite as the earliest diagenetic mineral phases, rhodochrosite and braunite forming secondarily, and later alteration forming Mn-silicates.