Documenting Antarctic Alteration of Eucrites

Abstract

When meteorites were discovered in Antarctica, it was anticipated that terrestrial alteration would be at a minimum because of their deepfreeze storage where chemical reaction rates would be low. However, early compositional and petrologic studies established the presence of terrestrial alteration phases (e.g., [1, 2]). These were especially prevalent in chondrites because metal and troilite are most susceptible to terrestrial alteration [3]. Howardites, eucrites and diogenites (HEDs) are less prone to alteration because they have low abundances of metal and troilite. Nevertheless, investigations of HED meteorites document a wide array of mineralogical, compositional and isotopic effects of terrestrial alteration (e.g., [4-8]). Studies of the mineralogical effects of alteration [4] were done with old scanning electron microscope (SEM) technology which could only image small regions at a time. The micro-context of alteration phases was revealed, but larger-scale context was difficult to establish. Here we demonstrate the utility of wholethin-section X-ray mapping of eucrites by modern SEMs to document large-scale distributions of alteration materials which serve to evaluate sample freshness, highlight regions for detail study, and facilitate testing a hypothesis for alteration of eucrites [8]