Pelagic sediments are rich in components that appear to have formed from seawater, so-called authigenic deposits. Such authigenic components are commonly well oxidized and are rich in many metals such as Cu, Co and Ni. On the other hand, most of these metals have restricted solubilities and very short residence times in seawater. True authigenesis can therefore only account for little of the "authigenic"-looking matter in the deep sea.Conservative mixing models, using average terrigenous matter, average marine biological matter, average volcanic matter (East Pacific Rise-emanation) and average basaltic matter, produce model sediments that are strikingly similar to real sediments.In the model sediments several of the trace-element abundances for instance those for Cu, Ni and Ba can only be explained by a large admixture of biological matter. Several of these elements are enriched in the authigenic phases in deep-sea sediments. This implies that most components that generally have been considered as authigenic are rearranged decay products of biological material.