Journal Article
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 113, iss. 46, pp. 12934-12939, 2016
Authors
Oscar Branson, Elisa A. Bonnin, Daniel E. Perea, Howard J. Spero, Zihua Zhu, Maria Winters, Bärbel Hönisch, Ann D. Russell, Jennifer S. Fehrenbacher, Alexander C. Gagnon
Abstract
Significance
Many marine organisms build complex CaCO
3
shells, which record an archive of past climate in their trace chemistry. Organic–mineral interactions are a crucial, poorly understood aspect of shell formation, which may alter shell composition and bias climate records. We map the chemistry of an organic template preserved within a type of shell that is widely used in studies of past climate. We find that the organic template embedded within this shell is enriched in Na and Mg, and can locally influence shell composition. Atom-scale maps of template chemistry offer a detailed view of the chemical interactions at an organic mineral template, and suggest that elements other than Ca
2+
may be important in defining the energetics of CaCO
3
nucleation during biomineralization.
