Carbonated ultramafic igneous rocks in Jezero crater, Mars
The Perseverance rover landed in Jezero crater on Mars, which once contained a lake of liquid water. We report the rock properties encountered by Perseverance during a 10-kilometer traverse extending over 400 meters in elevation, from beneath Jezero's western sedimentary fan to the upper crater rim. These rocks consist of coarse-grained olivine, magnesium and iron carbonates, silica, and phyllosilicates, including some of the oldest materials exposed within Jezero. We infer that these rocks formed by olivine accumulation in an igneous system of layered intrusions, followed by exposure to water and carbon dioxide, which caused extensive carbonation of the silicate minerals. Aqueous alteration was more pronounced at lower elevations. Higher-elevation exposures on the crater rim appear similar to olivine-rich rocks distributed over the wider Nili Fossae region.
Authors
- E. A. Cloutis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7301-0929)
- Eva L. Scheller (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9981-5802)
- R. A. Yingst (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0628-4265)
- Jorge I. Núñez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0930-6674)
- E. Dehouck (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1368-4494)
- Elias N. Mansbach (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1132-6682)
- Julene Aramendia (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3728-8370)
- David L. Shuster (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2507-9977)
- A. J. Brown (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9352-6989)
- J. F. Bell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2006-4074)
- Lucia Mandon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9310-0742)
- David Flannery (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8982-496X)
- Andrew D. Czaja (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2450-0734)
- Clément Royer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5472-7235)
- Kyle Uckert (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0859-5526)
- L. E. Mayhew (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6753-1434)
- Tanja Bosak (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5179-5323)
- Denise K. Buckner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5160-5857)
- Juan Manuel Madariaga (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1685-6335)
- Kenneth A. Farley (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7846-7546)
- David C. Catling (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5646-120X)
- J. N. Maki (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7887-0343)
- C. C. Bedford (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0783-1064)
- Brendan J. Orenstein (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6586-4227)
- K. P. Hand (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3225-9426)
- Michael W. Jones (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0720-8715)
- A. Steele (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9643-2841)
- Sandra Siljeström (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4975-6074)
- M. S. Bramble (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9440-4756)
- Nikole C. Haney (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5405-3616)
- Robert Barnes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7864-4824)
- Susanne Schröder (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1870-3663)
- Andrea Corpolongo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8623-358X)
- Shiv K. Sharma (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5676-7572)
- A. H. Treiman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8073-2839)
- F. M. McCubbin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2101-4431)
- Kenneth H. Williford (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0633-408X)
- Elise Clavé (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9514-8168)
- Sylvain Bernard (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5576-7020)
- Eleni Ravanis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0911-4341)
- Stephanie Connell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2109-1565)
- Mark A. Sephton (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2190-5402)
- Kimberly Poppy Sinclair (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6261-4591)
- Jeffrey T. Osterhout (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8523-0072)
- Adrian Broz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1843-6702)
- Ari Koeppel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9809-4863)
- Teresa Fornaro (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7705-9658)
- R. Bhartia (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1434-7481)
- Bradley Garczynski (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7668-3675)
- Nicole Schmitz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6481-6189)
- S. A. Fagents (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3943-3335)
- C. Pilorget (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7759-9854)
- William F. Hug (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0403-9979)
- Sergei V. Bykov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6161-0027)
- Anushree Srivastava (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-3713-5490)
- Yu Yu Phua (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9660-1991)
- Nicolas Randazzo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5551-8224)
- Briony H. N. Horgan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6314-9724)
- R. C. Wiens (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3409-7344)
- Amy J. Williams (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6299-0845)
- Keyron Hickman‐Lewis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8014-233X)
- O. Forni (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6772-9689)
- Justin I. Simon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3969-8958)
- Sanna Holm‐Alwmark (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0146-9324)
- Kathryn M. Stack (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3444-6695)
- Linda C. Kah (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7172-2033)
- Pierre Beck (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6532-5602)
- Jesús Martínez‐Frías (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2609-4485)
- Sanjeev Gupta (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6415-1332)
- Christian Tate (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3467-0099)
- Athanasios Klidaras (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-7231-8443)
- Sunanda Sharma (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8822-7960)
- Alexander Jones (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-4752-4543)
- U. Wolf (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8145-1864)
- B. P. Weiss (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3113-3415)
Institutions
- Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (FR)
- Dartmouth College (US)
- University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (US)
- Universidad Complutense de Madrid (ES)
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Planetary Science Institute (US)
- Goddard Space Flight Center (US)
- Universities Space Research Association (US)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory (US)
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (US)
- Texas State University (US)
- University of Alberta (CA)
- Queensland University of Technology (AU)
- University of the Basque Country (ES)
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- Université Fédérale de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées (FR)
- Lund University (SE)
- University of Colorado Boulder (US)
- Carnegie Institution for Science (US)
- University of Washington (US)
- Cornell University (US)
- Purdue University West Lafayette (US)
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Université Paris-Saclay (FR)
- Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory (IT)
- RISE Research Institutes of Sweden (SE)
- Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (US)
- Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR) (DE)
- University of Florida (US)
- Laboratoire de Minéralogie & Cosmochimie du Muséum (FR)
- Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (FR)
- Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble (FR)
- Photon Systems (United States) (US)
- Blue Marble Space (US)
- Institut de minéralogie, de physique des matériaux et de cosmochimie (FR)
- Johnson Space Center (US)
- Blue Marble Space Institute of Science (US)
- Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon : Terre, Planètes et Environnement (FR)
- Earth and Space Research (US)
- Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (FR)
- Imperial College London (GB)
- Western Washington University (US)
- Arizona State University (US)
- Lunar and Planetary Institute (US)
- University of Cincinnati (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- University of Tennessee at Knoxville (US)
- The University of Winnipeg (CA)
- Université Grenoble Alpes (FR)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Birkbeck, University of London (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Science
- Published
- 2025-12-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adu8264
- Citations
- 3
- Primary Topic
- Planetary Science and Exploration
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 3.46