Fig. 5

Chemical microprobe analysis of the exposed vessel-like structure corresponding to Fig. 3B–D (red arrow) and Fig. 4A–G from RSKM P2523.8. (A) SEM-EDS analysis for three mircoprobing locations as shown on a BSE image of the structure. Probe 1: bone matrix; Probe 2: Low atomic number vessel; Probe 3: high atomic number vessel. (B–E) Analysis using SXRMB at CLS. (B) Chemical map of iron and sulphur k\(\alpha\) showing spot microprobing location for XANES measurements. Pixel resolution = 10 \(\upmu\)m. (C) Iron K-edge LCF of the main composition of structure (\(\chi ^2 = 0.00873\)). (D) Iron K-edge LCF of the high atomic number area of the structure (\(\chi ^2 = 0.03736\)). (E) Sulphur K-edge LCF the high atomic number area of the structure (\(\chi ^2 = 0.12108\)). Full XANES statistics are given in Supplementary Table S4. Reference spectra used in the fitting are shown in Supplementary Fig. S8.