The Duration of Chemical Weathering of Gusev Crater's Wishstone-Watchtower Sequence
Mineralogical abundance of primary minerals versus secondary minerals, chemical mixing relationships, and elemental ratios have been used to assess the degree of aqueous alteration at Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum. However, limited work has used Ti-normalized mass-balance analysis chemical data to quantify gains and losses of elements from altered materials as well as estimate the duration of aqueous alteration on Mars. The Ti-normalized mass-balance approach accounts for volumetric changes associated with geochemical alteration. If volumetric changes are not considered, observed geochemical trends based on un-normalized data have the potential to be misleading. Assessing gains and losses from altered materials can indicate the geochemistry of fluids involved in the alteration. Furthermore, elemental losses can be combined with dissolution rates to estimate the duration of chemical weathering. Knowledge of the duration of aqueous alteration will provide insight into the climate history of Mars as well as indicate the potential for microbial habitability. The Wishstone-Watchtower materials in Gusev Crater are suitable candidates for Ti-normalized mass-balance analysis because mixing relationships of these two materials indicate that Watchtower materials may be derived from Wishstone-like materials. The objectives of this work are to (1) employ Ti-normalized mass-balance to assess gains and losses from the Wishstone-Watchtower sequence and (2) to combine losses with laboratory dissolution rates to estimate alteration times of the Watchtower material.