Already Endeavor is showing promise for prospecting! Zinc and bromine…how interesting. I’m not going to jump to hydrothermal vent conclusions, though. Zinc will move around with saline brines, too. And in arid environments, too. I used to find zinc oxide deposits out in the desert now and again. I’ll have to do some thinking ’bout this new development.
Good work, Oppy.
Additional Comment:
Zinc deposited by warm groundwater brines are part of a group of mineral deposits known as SedEx deposits. Basically, warm brines moving through deeply buried sediments dissolves metals then redeposits them when the waters are trapped and cool or actually oooze out on a seafloor. Some of the world’s largest deposits of Zinc were formed this way. But I’m not familiar with a SedEx deposit in a sulfate rich enviroment, but I’m looking
So I’m not at all surprised to see zinc showing up in these strange evaporite type rocks; in fact I’ve been hoping we’d have more metals than just iron and I hope we see some silver numbers soon, or lead. We might even find a zonation of metals in these rocks with depth showing how the brines moved through the stratigraphy.
Still reviewing how bromine would act in such a system.