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Science 31 March 1995:
Vol. 267. no. 5206, pp. 1981 - 1984
DOI: 10.1126/science.7701319
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Articles

Science, Vol 267, Issue 5206, 1981-1984
Copyright © 1995 by American Association for the Advancement of Science

articles

Signatures of the martian atmosphere in glass of the Zagami meteorite

K Marti, JS Kim, AN Thakur, TJ McCoy, and K Keil

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla 92093, USA.

Isotopic signatures of nitrogen, argon, and xenon have been determined in separated millimeter-sized pockets of shock-melted glass in a recently identified lithology of the meteorite Zagami, a shergottite. The ratio of nitrogen-15 to nitrogen-14, which is at least 282 per mil larger than the terrestrial value, the ratio of xenon-129 to xenon-132 = 2.40, and the argon isotopic abundances match the signatures previously observed in the glassy lithology of the Antarctic shergottite EETA 79001. These results show that the signatures in EETA 79001 are not unique but characterize the trapped gas component in shock-melted glass of shergottites. The isotopic and elemental ratios of nitrogen, argon, and xenon closely resemble the Viking spacecraft data for the martian atmosphere and provide compelling evidence for a martian origin of the two shergottites and, by extension, of the meteorites in the shergottites-nakhlites-chassignites (SNC) group.


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