The splendid preservation of the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale fauna, a fauna of exceptional importance for our understanding of the evolution of life, has not been adequately explained. Preservation of diagenetically altered remnants of the original organic tissues and formation of chlorite/illite coatings and cuticle replacements, both documented in the Burgess Shale fossils though not necessarily occurring together, can be understood as products of the same mechanism of fossilization of soft tissues. It is argued here that this mechanism consists of the following steps: (1) adsorption on structural biopolymers such as chitin, cellulose, and collagens of Fe 2؉ ions released during the oxidation of organic matter by iron(III)-reducing bacteria, (2) inhibition by the adsorbed Fe 2؉ ions of further bacterial decomposition of these biopolymers, which enables them to persist and later become kerogens; (3) in some microenvironments, nucleation of crystals of an iron(II)-rich clay mineral, a berthierine or a ferroan saponite, on the Fe 2؉ ions adsorbed on the preserved biopolymers and growth of such clay-mineral crystals to form a coating on the organic remains and/or to replace parts of the organism. The critical factors in the Burgess Shale-type preservation of Early and Middle Cambrian soft-bodied and lightly armored animals were probably: (1) rapid transport of live or freshly killed organisms into suboxic water, (2) extensive suboxic diagenesis in a sediment of high iron(III)/ (organic carbon) ratio, and (3) curtailment of the supply of sulfate ions shortly after the onset of pyritization. The proposed model of early diagenesis that results in Burgess Shale-type fossil preservation critically depends on the availability of steady suboxic depositional environments in open oceanic settings at depths of the order of 100 m in which iron(III)-rich fine-grained sediments, rapidly deposited with the entrained animals by turbidity currents, could accumulate without being disturbed by storm waves and deep currents. Evidence discussed in the present paper suggests that such conditions were common in the Early and Middle Cambrian.Adsorption of Fe 2؉ ions on structural biopolymers as a means of protecting organic fossil remains from decomposition by bacterial enzymes is a novel suggestion and needs to be demonstrated by direct experimentation. It is based on the following considerations. First, Fe 2؉ ions are strongly adsorbed on chitin under experimental conditions comparable to those in pore waters of suboxic iron-rich sediments, and while data on Fe 2؉ ion adsorption on collagen and cellulose seem to be lacking, other heavy-metal ions are strongly adsorbed on these biopolymers under appropriate conditions. Second, Fe 2؉ ions bonded with functional groups of chitin, collagen, or cellulose would prevent the very specific configuration and bonding which a biopolymer strand has to achieve within the active-site cleft of the appropriate bacterial enzyme to make enzymatic hydrolysis possible.Close examination of two other mecha...

We present a model that explains the patterns of sandstone burial diagenesis in certain oil reservoirs, in which petroleum migration and burial cementation were synchronous. The coincidence of these two processes controls the chemistry and distribution of major burial cement phases across the field, which in turn controls the distribution of reservoir quality, causing a rapid decline of porosity and permeability with depth. Such a rapid poroperm deterioration is observed in many North Sea sandstone oilfields; we highlight the Magnus Sandstone Member of the Magnus Oilfield, northern North Sea as a type example of such a reservoir. The two most significant elements of the synchronous cementation and migration model are that burial cementation in the reservoir occurs over a restricted time interval, probably less than 10 Ma and that rapid and widespread fluid circulation is not invoked to explain the concentrations of cements observed. We speculate that cementation takes place at, and in a series of zones below, the oil-water contact which descends as oil fills the reservoir, with little change to the bulk chemistry of the reservoir formation waters through time.