Distribution and speciation of uranium in pristine Tethyan phosphorites, Ionian Zone, Albania: Insights from synchrotron XRF/XANES analyses
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Tethyan phosphorites are globally the most important source of phosphate fertilizers and occasionally contain elevated contents of uranium (U) and rare-earth elements (REE). Extensive research has been conducted to elucidate Tethyan phosphorite occurrences, geochemistry, and formation mechanisms. However, the distribution and primary speciation of uranium in Tethyan phosphorites, during sedimentation and early diagenesis, remain unclear due to the scarcity of pristine phosphorites. This contribution integrates field and laboratory studies of Tethyan phosphorites of the Ionian Zone from Albania, including petrography, paragenetic relationships, chemical compositions, and bulk and microbeam synchrotron U L 3 -edge X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) and microbeam synchrotron X-ray fluorescence (μsXRF) mapping. These data provide a molecular-level understanding of the distribution, speciation, and enrichment mechanisms of uranium in pristine (primary) phosphorites. The phosphorites in the Ionian Zone of Albania occur as stratiform beds reaching several meters thick, lateral extension of up to 200 m, and U concentrations of up to 210 ppm. The phosphorites show three stages of mineral assemblages: primary mineralization dominated by carbonate-rich fluorapatite, organic matter, and phosphatized thin bivalve shells; followed by vein-filling calcite and pyrite; and finally, pyrite oxidation to iron oxides during surface weathering. The μsXRF mapping reveals positive correlations between U vs. P, S, and Sr, while bulk and microbeam U L 3 -edge XANES data indicate dominant U 4+ species in carbonate-rich fluorapatite. The results collectively suggest that uranium occurs as U 4+ in pristine carbonate-rich fluorapatite, formed in a low-energy, oxygen-minimum marine environment. These findings not only enhance our understanding of the formation mechanisms of uranium-bearing Tethyan phosphorites but also provide a baseline for determining uranium enrichment mechanisms in marine phosphorites worldwide.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".