[meteorite-list] Meteorites from the bottom of the ocean - Part 2 of 2

[Göran Axelsson]

A funny thing with gold in solutions is that it is commonly deposited in 
iron rich environments.
I have seen it in a number of gold mines in the area, quartz veins 
passing from an iron poor rock to an iron rich rock suddenly bocomes 
full of gold.
I also heard about iron objects in the rivers that have been coated by a 
thin gold cover.

This effect could easily explain why the gold level is so high. Sea 
water contains small amounts of gold in solution and a grain of iron in 
the mud could easily cause a lot of gold to concentrate.

/Göran, amateur geologist

bernd.pauli at paulinet.de wrote:
> Sky & Telescope, March 1999, p. 22: Piece of a Killer Asteroid ?
>
>   
... snip ...
> While the mineralogy of the fossil meteorite has undoubtedly changed over time, Kyte reports that the amounts of iron, chromium, and iridium are nevertheless close to the ranges seen in carbonaceous chondrites, a common meteorite type. Yet the specimen has one significant compositional oddity: it has 1,000 times more gold than chondritic meteorites commonly have, a curiosity that Kyte finds puzzling.
> Because the ocean-floor sediments at the K-T boundary accumulated over perhaps as much as 500,000 years, there is no way to prove that this truly is a piece of the
>   
... snip ...