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Cited by 253

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 8 of the 8 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Calcium Carbonate Concretions Formed by the Decomposition of Organic Matter

Berner, Robert A.·1968·Science

Abstract

Bacterial decomposition of butterfish and smelts in small sealed jars containing seawater and other solutions, for periods ranging from 65 to 205 days, results in a large increase in concentrations of dissolved bicarbonate, carbonate, and ammonia (plus volatile amines). Accompanying this is a rise in pH and the precipitation of Ca ++ ion from solution. The Ca ++ is not precipitated as CaCO 3 but instead as a mixture of calcium fatty acid salts or soaps with from 14 to 18 carbon atoms. This can be explained by the thermodynamic instability of CaCO 3 relative to Ca soaps in the presence of excess free fatty acid. It is suggested that some ancient CaCO 3 concretions, especially those enclosing fossils of soft-bodied organisms, may have formed rapidly after death in the form of natural Ca soap (adipocere) which was later converted to CaCO 3 .

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Metadata

Authors
Berner, R. A.
Venue
Science
Published
1968-01-12
Volume
159
Issue
3811
Pages
195-197
ISSN
  • 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
  • 1095-9203
OpenAlex
W1983214896
Cited by
253
References
8
FWCI
14.93
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Calcium Carbonate Concretions Formed by the Decomposition of Organic Matter. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1126/science.159.3811.195
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Berner, R. A. (1968). Calcium Carbonate Concretions Formed by the Decomposition of Organic Matter. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.159.3811.195

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.