Diverse and highly differentiated lava suite in Jezero crater, Mars: Constraints on intracrustal magmatism revealed by Mars 2020 PIXL.

ABSTRACT: The Jezero crater floor features a suite of related, iron-rich lavas that were examined and sampled by the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance, and whose textures, minerals, and compositions were characterized by the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL). This suite, known as the Máaz formation (fm), includes dark-toned basaltic/trachy-basaltic rocks with intergrown pyroxene, plagioclase feldspar, and altered olivine and overlying trachy-andesitic lava with reversely zoned plagioclase phenocrysts in a K-rich groundmass. Feldspar thermal disequilibrium textures indicate that they were carried from their crustal staging area. Bulk and mafic minerals have very high FeO and low MgO to FeO_total ratios, which are partially reproduced by thermodynamic models involving high-degr

SUBMITTER: Schmidt ME 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11778241 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature