Bernd Sahlmann wrote,
> in 1960, JA Allen  published an article titled "Manganese deposition on
the shells of living molluscs", Nature, 185: 336-337 that described at least
the black deposits on the tip of the scaphopod Dentalium entale containing
Manganese.

This is very interesting. While working on my dissertation, I found a
brittle black crust on the tubes of the deepsea polychaete Hyalinoecia in
the bathyal San Clemente Basin offshore from San Diego, California. One of
my professors was intrigued and got a mineralogist interested too. X-ray
diffractometry showed that the mineral was todorokite, a precursor to the
manganese oxides found in deepsea nodules.

At the time, abyssal manganese nodules were being investigated for possible
mining; they are rich in chromium and nickel as well as manganese, and one
especially enthusiastic entrepreneur was predicting that stainless steel
would become cheap enough to use for building bridges. All this ended
abruptly when an international treaty allocated most of the ocean floor to
individual nations and left the rest without clear title except as the
"common heritage of mankind." The deepsea miners had hoped to exploit
unowned seafloor without paying royalties to anyone, but it turned out that
even landlocked countries were now demanding a percentage of the profits.
And because the miners had hyped the value of the deposits to potential
investors, sufficient profits were not possible. Deepsea biologists heaved a
quiet sigh of relief, as the mining would have disrupted huge areas of
fragile seafloor whose biologic communities would take thousands of years to
recover. The issue will return eventually, of course, just like the
controversy over oil production from Alaska's North Slope.

But I digress. The nodules were also intriguing because they were supposed
to be very old, growing extremely slowly on seafloors that receive only a
few centimeters of sediment per thousand years. But on the polychaete tubes
was a manganese deposit being deposited at a fantastic rate: We felt we
could discount the possibility of extremely old worms, though we couldn't
rule it out altogether. Either way, we felt that the news was worthy of the
journal Science, but they rejected it with alacrity, as they reject 90
percent of all contributed manuscripts. I wanted to resubmit the manuscript,
but the mineralogist lost interest, for soon afterward he had to deal with
an unrelated personal tragedy, and because he had the data, we couldn't
proceed without his active cooperation. And that was the end of that, though
I kept reminding him for a few years. All he had to do was to pull a folder
from a file and mail it, but he could not make himself do it. Now I'm older
and have passed through a few personal tragedies myself, and I understand.

And now I find that the worthy J. A. Allen preceded us by more than twenty
years, I don't feel quite so bad about the loss to science. Thank you,
Bernd!

Cheers,
Andrew

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.6.9 - Release Date: 1/6/2005

----------------------------------------------------------------------
[log in to unmask] - a forum for informal discussions on molluscs
To leave this list, click on the following web link:
http://listserv.uga.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=conch-l&A=1
Type your email address and name in the appropriate box and
click leave the list.
----------------------------------------------------------------------