Abstract
Jezero crater is located in Mars’ largest olivine-rich region, which is variously interpreted as lava flows, intrusive plutons, clastic sediments, or pyroclastics. In Jezero crater, several olivine-rich units have been investigated by the Perseverance rover, including an olivine cumulate in the crater floor (Séítah formation) and the enigmatic “Margin Unit”; an olivine- and carbonate-rich unit commonly interpreted as either a lake shore deposit or a local expression of the regional olivine-carbonate unit. We developed a method incorporating X-ray diffraction energy and spatial information to accurately determine the forsterite content (molar percentage of MgO/(MgO+FeOT)) of monocrystalline olivine encountered by Perseverance. Forsterite content in clastic sediments of the western Jezero fan indicate multiple olivine sources. In contrast, forsterite content analysed in the Margin Unit is similar to the Séítah formation, suggesting that at least some of the Margin Unit may represent an altered igneous cumulate with similar origins to the Séítah formation.
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Data available at the NASA Planetary Data System https://pds.nasa.gov/.
Code availability
Code used in this manuscript is available at https://github.com/bjorens/PIXL_spatially_coherent_monocrystalline_regions/.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by Australian Research Council grant DE210100205. The research was carried out in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). E.A.C. thanks the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (grant #RGPIN-2023-03413) and the Canadian Space Agency (grant #22EXPCOI4) for their support. We acknowledge the members of the Mars 2020 team who performed mission operations and thank Christoph Schrank, Olivier Beyssac, Nicolas Mangold, Elise Clavé, and the SuperCam team for feedback that improved the manuscript. We also thank Jesper Henneke and David Arge Klevang for their assistance in aligning PIXL footprints to ACI and MCC images.
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Brendan J. Orenstein contributed to conceptualization, methodology, software, formal analysis, investigation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, and visualization. David T. Flannery contributed to conceptualization, methodology, investigation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, visualization, supervision, and funding acquisition. Michael W. M. Jones contributed to conceptualization, methodology, software, formal analysis, investigation, writing— original draft, writing—review and editing, visualization, and supervision. Eleanor L. Moreland contributed to conceptualization, methodology, software, formal analysis, investigation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, and visualization. Kirsten L. Siebach contributed to conceptualization, methodology, software, formal analysis, investigation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, and supervision. Michael M. Tice contributed to methodology, software, and writing— review and editing. Allan H. Treiman contributed to methodology, investigation, writing—original draft, and writing—review and editing. Briony Horgan contributed to conceptualization, validation, investigation, writing—review and editing, and supervision. Balz Kamber contributed to conceptualization, methodology, investigation, supervision, and writing—review and editing. Athanasios Klidaras contributed to conceptualization, validation, investigation, and writing—review and editing. Luke Nothdurft contributed to conceptualization, methodology, investigation, writing—review and editing, and visualization. Yang Liu contributed to writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, and visualization. Edward Cloutis contributed to writing—original draft, and writing—review and editing. Abigail C. Allwood contributed to project administration, writing—review and editing, and funding acquisition. Scott VanBommel contributed to writing—review and editing.
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Orenstein, B.J., Flannery, D.T., Jones, M.W.M. et al. Igneous and sedimentary origins of Jezero crater units from X-ray crystal mapping on Mars. Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03227-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03227-2
