Biogenic substance

This concept was introduced into the doctrine of the biosphere by the great scientist Academician Vernadsky. The biogenic substance according to Vernadsky is "a substance created by life, with a powerful potential energy." It was about bitumen, oil, limestone, coal, etc.

Simply put, organic particles are a biogenic substance. Examples are wool, teeth, dropped deer horns, feathers dropped by birds, fallen leaves, fruits and pollen of plants, tree bark or fallen asleep, animal excrement. Biogenic substances include pearls, eggshells, bile (kidney) stones, milk, nectar, cobwebs, silk. The list is endless.

A non-biogenic substance can also be formed by living organisms, but it, unlike the biogenic, is extremely unstable in the biosphere, as it is vigorously processed by other living organisms.

A process is especially characteristic for organic compounds. Only a small portion of non-biogenic substances become fossil, passing into polybiogenic substances. Sedimentary rocks of our planet were formed in past geological epochs. To polybiogenic substances in sedimentary rocks, for example, detritus (plant), remains of organisms (we call them mummified), coprolites, amber, microbiogenic minerals (iron hydroxides, sulfides, carbonates, etc.) can be classified.

The Earth's rocks are created, basically, by living organisms. The same carbonate rocks (dolomites, limestone, chalk) were the result of plankton activity and the bottom film of inland water bodies and the World Ocean.

Coprolite limestones are also considered to be biogenic. This is also a rock, in which the starting material for the formation of steel is the feces of silts that have processed lime mud.

Siliceous rocks (quartz, opal, chalcedony) are composed mainly of skeletal remains of "silicon" organisms - diatoms (diatoms), radiolarians, sponges, silicoflagellate.

But combustible fossils (caustobioliths) are sedimentary rocks and are characterized by significant concentrations of the biogenic substances we are considering. Caustobioliths were formed under a certain influence of the energy functions of various living organisms.

Especially intensively, the organic non-biogenic substance accumulates in parts of the lakes and in the marshes, and in the biosphere is modern. For example, in our country about 60% of peat reserves from the world's total. And this is explained by a certain geographical location and, of course, climatic conditions.

Continental reservoirs and the World Ocean accumulate the remains of plankton, free-floating and bottom microorganisms, sapropel (sediments of silt in fresh water bodies), animal excrement. By the way, some of this process can be observed even at home, in aquariums.

Coal, in turn, is formed from peat, but only already ancient. Combustible shales were formed from sapropels. Here the organic matter is represented by phytoplankton (remnants). But there are also schists "semi-combustible" - they contain the remains of zooplankton and zoobenthos.

The biogenic substance caused the appearance of "black gold" - oil. "Parents" of oil are the remains of the already mentioned plankton organisms.

Phosphate, manganese and ferruginous rocks are sedimentary, with a low concentration of biogenic substance.

If we consider the deposits of phosphorites, then more than 90% is in the bottom sediments of the seas, the origin, as you can guess, is organic. The main accumulator of phosphorus is phytoplankton, which is so often described as the glow of water at night. Well, the sediment of phosphorus on the bottom of the sea is the faeces of zooplankton.

Iron or manganese rocks form living organisms of marshes, lakes, seas, oceans. The concentration of iron and manganese depends on the iron bacteria.

Alive organisms (including bauxites), salts, detrital and clay rocks are created by living organisms.

But "the most powerful potential energy" was created for centuries and millennia, deposited by the shares of millimeters. We are expending this energy in huge quantities. On the prospects to think about now, because with such a pace, the stock of most fossils will be exhausted completely by the end of this century ...