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Silica is an important nutrient utilized by plants, trees, and grasses in the terrestrial biosphere. Silicate is transported by rivers and can be deposited in soils in the form of various siliceous polymorphs. Plants can readily uptake silicate in the form of H 4 SiO 4 for the formation of phytoliths.
Biogenic silica (bSi), also referred to as opal, biogenic opal, or amorphous opaline silica, forms one of the most widespread biogenic minerals. For example, microscopic particles of silica called phytoliths can be found in grasses and other plants. Silica is an amorphous metalloid oxide formed by complex inorganic polymerization processes.
Silicate minerals are rock-forming minerals made up of silicate groups. They are the largest and most important class of minerals and make up approximately 90 percent of Earth's crust. [1] [2] [3] In mineralogy, silica (silicon dioxide, SiO 2) is usually considered a silicate mineral rather than an oxide mineral. Silica is found in nature as ...
The former category is also known as biogenic silica, which is a ubiquitous material in animals and plants. The latter category is the second most abundant element in Earth's crust. [9] Silicate minerals are the major components of 95% of presently identified rocks. [10]
Permineralization is a process of fossilization of bones and tissues in which mineral deposits form internal casts of organisms. Carried by water, these minerals fill the spaces within organic tissue. Because of the nature of the casts, permineralization is particularly useful in studies of the internal structures of organisms, usually of ...
Water is the principal agent of chemical weathering, converting many primary minerals to clay minerals or hydrated oxides via reactions collectively described as hydrolysis. Oxygen is also important, acting to oxidize many minerals, as is carbon dioxide, whose weathering reactions are described as carbonation .
Fossil skeletal parts from extinct belemnite cephalopods of the Jurassic – these contain mineralized calcite and aragonite.. Biomineralization, also written biomineralisation, is the process by which living organisms produce minerals, [a] often resulting in hardened or stiffened mineralized tissues.
Weathering is the natural process of rocks and minerals dissolving to the action of water, ice, acids, salts, plants, animals, and temperature changes. [12] It is mechanical (breaking up rock—also called physical weathering or disaggregation) and chemical (changing the chemical compounds in the rocks). [12]