Mantle Salts: Serpentinisation forms huge carbonate chimneys on the seafloor

In this video from our upcoming online evaporites course (the course will be online in the first quarter of 2025), we delve into the fascinating world of hydrothermal carbonate precipitates. Precipitation of non-solar mineral salts (aragonite-calcite-brucite) is chemosynthetically facilitated by methanogenesis and the escape of associated hydrogen and abiogenic short-chain hydrocarbons. Over 30,00 years, the vents have created huge seafloor vent chimneys, all hosted atop faulted and fractured regions of mantle exposure and serpentinisation in water depths ranging from the abyssal to the photic zone.