The mystery of mercury in an ancient ephemeral lake

At the bottom of an ancient ephemeral lake which existed roughly 50 million years ago, a piece of mercury is preserved. This is one of the most studied ancient lakes in the world, and the conditions at the lake bottom are understood to have been hostile to the preservation of a piece of mercury. Studies of the chemical elements at the lake bottom paint a picture of an ancient environment, whose relationship to our world today is primarily related to interests in energy and environmental resource management. However, there are symbolic links to Greco-Roman mythology present in the discovery, whose narrative is used to paint a compelling mystery—with a twist of fantasy to fuel the imagination. Through the use of symbols and iconography, tools used more often in the History of Science, some findings of this research are made accessible to a wider audience in a different format than is typically utilized for traditional science communication. The mystery of the preservation of a volatile and toxic metal, whose presence in solid form counterdicts the prevailing scientific understanding of the chemistry of of the lake bottom—where by all rights it should be soluble. This compels an explanation of the underlying circumstances.