Alteration history of aluminum-rich rocks at Jezero crater, Mars
Creators
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Broz, A. P.1, 2
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Horgan, B. H. N.1
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Bedford, C.1
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Royer, C.3
- Manelski, H.1
- Connell, S.1
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Wiens, R. C.1
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Cardarelli, E. C.4
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Madariaga, J. M.5
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Mandon, L.6, 7
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Klidaras, A.1
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Bramble, M.8
- Kathir, B.9
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Forni, O.10
- Carter, John11
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Dehouck, E.12
- Quantin-Nataf, C.12
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Johnson, J. R.13
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Nuñez, J. I.13
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Hausrath, E.14
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Wolf, U.15
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Cloutis, E. A.16
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Beck, P.6
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Bell, J. F.17
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Simon, J. I.18
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Cousin, A.15, 19
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1.
Purdue University West Lafayette
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2.
University of Oregon
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3.
Atmospheres Laboratory Environments, Observations Spatiales
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4.
University of California, Los Angeles
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5.
University of the Basque Country
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6.
Grenoble Alpes University
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7.
California Institute of Technology
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8.
Jet Propulsion Lab
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9.
Dartmouth College
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10.
Paul Sabatier University
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11.
Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale
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12.
Claude Bernard University Lyon 1
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13.
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
- 14. University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), Las Vegas, NV, USA
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15.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
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16.
University of Winnipeg
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17.
Arizona State University
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18.
Johnson Space Center
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19.
Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology
Abstract
Aluminum-rich clay minerals are detected across the ancient surface of Mars and record intervals of intense alteration by liquid water. On Earth, these clay minerals can form from hydrothermal alteration or rainfall-driven chemical weathering over thousands to millions of years, but how they formed on Mars remains a mystery. The Perseverance rover discovered light-toned, cobble-sized, aluminum-rich (30-45 wt% Al2O3) “float” rocks (rock fragments), with some exhibiting spectral signatures of kaolinite, an aluminum-rich clay mineral. These rocks now enable an investigation into the ancient kaolinite-bearing terrains of Mars. To interpret their formation, we use data from the SuperCam and Mastcam-Z instruments onboard the rover to compare the chemistry and reflectance spectra of the float rocks with deeply weathered paleosols and hydrothermal kaolin deposits from Earth’s geological record. Aluminum and titanium enrichments coupled with depletion of iron and magnesium are unlike hydrothermal deposits and instead comparable to bleached horizons of paleosols that formed under high rainfall during past greenhouse climates on Earth. These rocks therefore likely represent some of the wettest intervals of Mars’ history.
Copyright and License
© The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Acknowledgement
The authors are eternally grateful for the Mars 2020 Science and Engineering Teams, and the decades of authors who have studied Earth’s kaolinite. Funding sources: NASA contract NNH13ZDA018O for SuperCam (C.R., C.C.B., R.C.W., A.O., S.C.); SuperCam, (1532432) and Mastcam-Z (15-707, 1511125) (JRJ); Mastcam-Z (15-707, 1511125) (BK); Texaco Postdoctoral prize fellowship awarded by the division of Geological and Planetary Sciences of Caltech (L.M.); Spanish Agency for Research AEI/MCIN/FEDER, Grant No. PID2022-142750OB-I00 (J.M.M.), and NASA RSS Participating Scientist grant 80NSSC20K0239 (E.M.H.). A portion of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004).
Data Availability
The supplementary dataset (Supplementary Data) containing elemental composition and reflectance spectra of all targets examined in this work is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17109674. All Mars 2020 Perseverance rover datasets (including those used in this work) are available on the Planetary Data System (PDS) at the PDS Geosciences Node (https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/mars2020/index.html) and the PDS Cartography and Imaging Sciences Node (https://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/volumes/mars2020.html). Links to specific instrument dataset bundles are listed below:
Mars 2020 Mission bundle: https://doi.org/10.17189/1522642
SuperCam Instrument bundle: https://doi.org/10.17189/1522646
Mastcam-Z Science Imaging bundle: https://doi.org/10.17189/q3ts-c749
Supplemental Material
Files
s43247-025-02856-3.pdf
Additional details
Identifiers
- PMCID
- PMC12669020
- PMID
- 41340812
Funding
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NNH13ZDA018O
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 1532432
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 1511125
- California Institute of Technology
- Texaco Postdoctoral Prize Fellowship -
- Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades
- PID2022-142750OB-I00
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NSSC20K0239
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NM0018D0004
Dates
- Submitted
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2025-05-21
- Accepted
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2025-09-30
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)
- Publication Status
- Published