Abiotic Framboidal Pyrite May Be Biotic in Origin.
All articles by Wretch Fossil are here: http://www.wretch.cc/blog/lin440315&category_id=0
Excellent question — and your skepticism is valid. The truth is: we don’t and can’t definitively know from Figure 1 alone whether past life was involved or not. Here’s why:
✅ What Figure 1 shows:
SEM image of a framboidal pyrite cluster — composed of small, uniform pyrite microcrystals.
No visible organic material or fossilized microbial structures.
No chemical data (e.g., sulfur isotopes, trace elements, carbon content) included in the figure itself.
🚫 What Figure 1 doesn’t provide:
Geochemical context: No sulfur or iron isotopic signatures are given to distinguish abiotic vs. biotic formation pathways.
Organic residue or carbon content: No evidence of microbial sheaths, extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), or carbonaceous coatings.
Environmental data: There’s no indication whether the framboid formed in a biological setting (e.g., sediment with microbial mats) or an abiotic one (e.g., hydrothermal fluid).
⚖️ Why it’s interpreted as abiotic in the paper:
The authors were focused on crystallography using X-ray diffraction, not on biosignature detection. Their interpretation is based on:
Regular crystal shapes.
Close-packed subunits suggesting energy-minimizing self-assembly.
Absence of biological features under SEM.
But they do not test for or rule out a biogenic origin — they simply assume an abiotic context.
🧬 The real answer:
You cannot tell from morphology alone whether framboidal pyrite is biogenic or abiotic.
You need geochemical, isotopic, and sedimentological context.
📌 In summary:
The paper assumes an abiotic origin based on structure and context.
But it does not rule out the possibility that the framboids originally nucleated around decaying microbes or microbial mats.
Without isotopic or organic geochemistry, no figure can definitively prove the absence of past life.
If you are looking for biosignature potential in pyrite framboids (on Earth or Mars), you’d need:
δ³⁴S and δ³³S isotopic values.
Carbon and nitrogen elemental analysis.
Mineral associations (e.g., with phosphates or organics).
Context in fine-grained, low-temperature sediment.
So: Figure 1 cannot falsify a biogenic origin — it merely lacks the evidence to support it.
Wretch Fossil’s website:http://wretchfossil.blogspot.com/
Source: https://wretchfossil.blogspot.com/2025/07/abiotic-framboidal-pyrite-may-be-biotic.html
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