Metasomatism is a source of methane on Mars

The abundance of inactive Martian volcanic centres suggests that early Mars was more volcanically active than today. On Earth, volcanic degassing releases climate-forcing gases such as H 2 O, SO 2 , and CO 2 into the atmosphere. On Mars, the volcanic carbon is likely to be more methane-rich than on Earth because the interior is, and was, more reducing than the present-day Terrestrial upper mantle. The reports of reduced carbon associated with high-temperature minerals in Martian igneous meteorites back up this assertion. Here, we undertake irreversible reaction path models of the fluid -rock interaction to predict carbon speciation in magmatic fluids at the Martian crust-mantle boundary. We find methane is a major carbon species between 300 and 800 degrees C where log f O 2 is set at the Fayalite = Magnetite + Quartz redox buffer reaction (FMQ). When log f O 2 is below FMQ, methane is dominant across all temperatures investigated (300 - 800 degrees C). Moreover, ultramafic rocks produce more methane than mafic lithologies. The cooling of magmatic bodies leads to the release of a fluid phase, which serves as a medium within which methane is formed at high temperatures and transported. Metasomatic methane is, therefore, a source of reduced carbonaceous gases to the early Martian atmosphere and, fundamentally, for all telluric planets, moons, and exoplanets with Mars -like low log f O 2 interiors.