Recent discoveries
of hydrocarbons in pre-salt carbonate deposits of the South Atlantic have
generated significant interest in microbial influences on carbonate mineral
precipitation. Fifty years ago, Scholland Taft broke with conventional
wisdom (“…that inorganic processes of
tufa deposition at Mono Lake are so dominant that tufa formation by algae is
not significant”) and suggested the important role of algae on
mineralization. The careful field, slab, and petrographic observations were
interpreted to reflect the situation in which “algae initiate much of the precipitation and thereby fashion the
calcitic or aragonitic framework of lithoid tufa.”
Algae, contributors to the formation of calcareous tufa, Mono Lake, California by David W. Scholl and William H. Taft, Journal of Sedimentary
Petrology, v. 34, p. 309-319.
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