Case hardening is the process by which the outer shell of an exposed rock surface hardens due to near-surface diagenesis. Rock coatings and weathering rinds are distinct phenomena: rock coatings accrete on surfaces; weathering rinds derive from mineral dissolution and mechanical fracturing of the outer millimeters of a rock to create porosity. Ongoing reaction with rain, dew, or melted snow results in the downward migration of rock-coating components into weathering-rind pores. Initially, pore infilling protects the outer surface of the rock from flaking. As case hardening progresses, however, ongoing mineral dissolution underneath the case-hardened zone eventually leads to detachment. This sudden loss can destroy rock art, the surfaces of stone monuments, and facing stones of buildings.

– Six large iron meteorites have been discovered in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in a nearly 25 km-long traverse. Herein, we review and synthesize the available data to propose that the discovery and characteristics of the six meteorites could be explained as the result of their impact into a soft and wet surface, sometime during the Noachian or the Hesperian, subsequently to be exposed at the Martian surface through differential erosion. As recorded by its sediments and chemical deposits, Meridiani has been interpreted to have undergone a watery past, including a shallow sea, a playa, an environment of fluctuating ground water, and/or an icy landscape. Meteorites could have been encased upon impact and/or subsequently buried, and kept underground for a long time, shielded from the atmosphere. The meteorites apparently underwent significant chemical weathering due to aqueous alteration, as indicated by cavernous features that suggest differential acidic corrosion removing less resistant material and softer inclusions. During the Amazonian, the almost complete disappearance of surface water and desiccation of the landscape, followed by induration of the sediments and subsequent differential erosion and degradation of Meridiani sediments, including at least 10–80 m of deflation in the last 3–3.5 Gy, would have exposed the buried meteorites. We conclude that the iron meteorites support the hypothesis that Mars once had a denser atmosphere and considerable amounts of water and/or water ice at and/or near the surface.

Detailed microscopic investigations of horizons in a surface paleosol, part of a pedostratigraphic stack of tills at New Mountain, Antarctica, dated to the middle Miocene climatic optimum event (ca. 15 Ma), suggest not only that the paleoclimate history of the continent can be read from stratigraphic layers within paleosols but also that records of cosmic events may lie embedded in coatings on sand clasts resident in paleosols. Recent microscopic and chemical data from sands in the upper horizons of a surface paleosol (Ant-828), adjacent to the Taylor Glacier, contain Fe and Na coatings surfaced with cosmic signatures including welded and shock-melted grains, opaque carbon coatings, microfeature stack of cards, Fe spherules, solubilized grain surfaces with streams of melted skin, a grain carrying an Ir signature, rare earth elements elevated above crustal averages, and slightly elevated Pt/Pd ratios. The projected link to the probable black-mat event of 12.8 ka is reinforced by the presence of fresh opaque carbon and other cosmic signatures on grain surfaces that overlie well-weathered grain features, presumably weathering from middle Miocene time near today. Evidence of CO₂ and NO_x accumulations dated to 12.9 ka in the Taylor Ice Dome suggest that the black-mat impact/airburst of the same time line as the Younger Dryas boundary may have reached across South America and the Pacific Ocean to the Dry Valley Mountains of Antarctica.

Understanding the mechanism associated with rates of weathering and evolution of rocks→sediment→soil→paleosol in alpine environments raises questions related to the impact of microbial mediation versus various diverse abiotic chemical/physical processes, even including the overall effect of cosmic impact/airburst during the early stage of weathering in Late Glacial (LG) deposits. This study is of a chronosequence of soils/paleosols, with an age range that spans the post–Little Ice Age (post-LIA; <150 yr), the Little Ice Age (LIA; AD 1500–1850), the middle Neoglacial (∼3 ka)–Younger Dryas (YD; <12.8 ka), and the LG (<15 ka). The goal is to elicit trends in weathering, soil morphogenesis, and related eubacterial population changes over the past 13–15 k.yr. The older LG/YD paleosols in the sequence represent soil morphogenesis that started during the closing stage of Pleistocene glaciation. These are compared with undated soils of mid- to late Neoglacial age, the youngest of LIA and post-LIA age. All profiles formed in a uniform parent material of metabasalt composition and in moraine, rockfall, protalus, and alluvial fan deposits. Elsewhere in Europe, North America, and Asia, the cosmic impact/airburst event at 12.8 ka often produced a distinctive, carbon-rich “black mat” layer that shows evidence of high-temperature melting. At this alpine site, older profiles of similar LG age contain scorched and melted surface sediments that are otherwise similar in composition to the youngest/thinnest profiles developing in the catchment today. Moreover, microbial analysis of the sediments offers new insight into the genesis of these sediments: the C and Cu (u = unweathered) horizons in LG profiles present at 12.8 ka (now Ah/Bw) show bacterial population structures that differ markedly from recent alluvial/protalus sample bacterial populations. We propose here that these differences are, in part, a direct consequence of the age/cosmic impact/weathering processes that have occurred in the chronosequence. Of the several questions that emerge from these sequences, perhaps the most important involve the interaction of biotic-mineral factors, which need to be understood if we are to generally fully appreciate the role played by microbes in rock weathering.