TY - JOUR
T1 - Earth's phosphides in Levant and insights into the source of Archean prebiotic phosphorus
AU - Britvin, Sergey N.
AU - Murashko, Michail N.
AU - Vapnik, Yevgeny
AU - Polekhovsky, Yury S.
AU - Krivovichev, Sergey V.
N1 - Funding Information: This research was financially supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Research grant no. 14-05-00910 and President grant for government support of the leading scientific schools of the Russian Federation no. 1583.2014.5. X-ray diffraction studies have been performed at the X-ray Diffraction Centre of St. Petersburg State University.
PY - 2015/2/10
Y1 - 2015/2/10
N2 - Natural phosphides - the minerals containing phosphorus in a redox state lower than zero - are common constituents of meteorites but virtually unknown on the Earth. Herein we present the first rich occurrence of iron-nickel phosphides of terrestrial origin. Phosphide-bearing rocks are exposed in three localities in the surroundings of the Dead Sea, Levant: in the northern Negev Desert, Israel and Transjordan Plateau, south of Amman, Jordan. Seven minerals from the ternary Fe-Ni-P system have been identified with five of them, NiP2, Ni5P4, Ni2P, FeP and FeP2, previously unknown in nature. The results of the present study could provide a new insight on the terrestrial origin of natural phosphides - the most likely source of reactive prebiotic phosphorus at the times of the early Earth.
AB - Natural phosphides - the minerals containing phosphorus in a redox state lower than zero - are common constituents of meteorites but virtually unknown on the Earth. Herein we present the first rich occurrence of iron-nickel phosphides of terrestrial origin. Phosphide-bearing rocks are exposed in three localities in the surroundings of the Dead Sea, Levant: in the northern Negev Desert, Israel and Transjordan Plateau, south of Amman, Jordan. Seven minerals from the ternary Fe-Ni-P system have been identified with five of them, NiP2, Ni5P4, Ni2P, FeP and FeP2, previously unknown in nature. The results of the present study could provide a new insight on the terrestrial origin of natural phosphides - the most likely source of reactive prebiotic phosphorus at the times of the early Earth.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84930674961&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1038/srep08355
DO - https://doi.org/10.1038/srep08355
M3 - Article
C2 - 25667163
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 5
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
M1 - 8355
ER -