Petrologic evidence for low-temperature, possibly flood evaporitic origin of carbonates in the ALH84001 meteorite.
High-temperature models for origin of the carbonates in Martian meteorite ALH84001 are implausible. The impact metasomatism model, invoking reaction between CO2 rich fluid and the host orthopyroxenite, requires conversion of olivine into orthopyroxene, yet olivine in ALH84001 shows no depletion in carbonate-rich areas; or else conversion of orthopyroxene into silica, which should have yielded a higher silica/carbonate ratio. The impact melt model implies that the fracture-linked carbonates, as products of melt injection, should appear as continuous planar veins, but in many areas they do not. Both vapor deposition and impact melting seem inconsistent with the zoned poikilotopic texture of many large carbonates. The popular hydrothermal model is inconsistent with the virtual absence of secondary hydrated silicates in ALH84001. Prior brecciation should have facilitated alteration. Hydrothermal fluids would be warm, and rate of hydration of mafic silicates obeys an Arrhenius law, at least up to approximately 100 degrees C. Most important, hydrothermal episodes tend to last for many years. Many areas of the ancient Martian crust show evidence for massive flooding. I propose that the carbonates formed as evaporite deposits from floodwaters that percolated through the fractures of ALH84001, but only briefly, as evaporation and groundwater flow caused the water table to quickly recede beneath the level of this rock during the later stages of the flood episode. The setting might have been a layer of megaregolith beneath a surface catchment of pooled floodwater, analogous to a playa lake. Carbonate precipitation would occur in response to evaporative concentration of the water. To explain the scarcity of sulfates in ALH84001, the water table must be assumed to recede quickly relative to the rate of evaporation. During the period when ALH84001 was above the water table, evaporation would have slowed, as the evaporation front passed beneath the surface of the debris layer, and possibly earlier, if the shrinking pool of surface water developed a porous sulfate crust. Alternatively, ALH84001 may have developed as a Martian form of calcrete, i.e., the evaporating flood(s) may have been entirely below ground as it (they) passed slowly through ALH84001. The greatest advantage of the flood evaporite model is that it exposes ALH84001 to carbonate precipitation without prolonged exposure to aqueous alteration. The model also seems consistent with the heavy and extremely heterogeneous oxygen isotopic compositions of the carbonates. However, this hypothesis seems no more than marginally consistent with the suggestion of McKay et al. [1996] that the carbonates are biogenic.