Multiple microtektite horizons in upper eocene marine sediments: no evidence for mass extinctions

Microtektites have been recovered from three horizons in eight middle Eocene to middle Oligocene marine sediment sequences. Five of these occurrences are coeval and of latest Eocene age (37.5 to 38.0 million years ago); three are coeval and of early late Eocene age (38.5 to 39.5 million years ago); and three are of middle Oligocene age (31 to 32 million years ago). In addition, rare probable microtektites have been found in sediments with ages of about 36.0 to 36.5 million years. The microtektite horizon at 37.5 to 38.0 million years can be correlated with the North American tektite-strewn field, which has a fission track age (minimum) of 34 to 35 million years and a paleomagnetic age of 37.5 to 38.0 million years. There is no evidence for mass faunal extinctions at any of the microtektite horizons. Many of the distinct faunal changes that occurred in the middle Eocene to middle Oligocene can be related to the formation of the Antarctic ice sheet and the associated cooling phenomena and intensification of bottom currents that led to large-scale dissolution of calcium carbonate and erosion, which created areally extensive hiatuses in the deep-sea sediment records. The occurrence of microtektite horizons of several ages and the lack of evidence for faunal extinctions suggest that the effects of extraterrestrial bolide impacts may be unimportant in the biologic realm during middle Eocene to middle Oligocene time.     

Glassy microspherules (microtektites) from an upper devonian limestone

The properties of microspherules recovered from an Upper Devonian marine limestone immediately overlain by a geochemical anomaly of siderophile and chalcophile elements are similar to those of impact-derived microtektites. These microspherules are glass, have splash-form shapes, contain spherical vesicles and lechatelierite inclusions, and show oxide compositional variations similar to those in known microtektites. These characteristics suggest that these Upper Devonian microspherules have an impact origin. A bolide impact may have occurred about 365 million years ago on the South China Plate and caused a faunal extinction on eastern Gondwana.     

Evidence for a major meteorite impact on the Earth 34 million years ago: implication for eocene extinctions

A deep-sea core from the Caribbean contains a layer of sediment highly enriched in meteoritic iridium. This layer underlies a layer of North American microtektites dated at 34.4 million years ago and coincides with the extinction of five major species of Radiolaria. It is suggested that a massive, chemically undifferentiated meteorite collided with the earth, producing the tektites and leading to extinctions 34 million years ago.     

Impacts, tsunamis, and the haitian cretaceous-tertiary boundary layer

The marker bed at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary of the Beloc Formation (southern Haiti) contains abundant coarse-grained microtektites and minor amounts of shocked quartz grains in the basal part. The upper part is composed of medium-grained marl with amalgamated microtektite lenses and finer-grained marl lenses disseminated throughout. Field and petrographic observations, and the distribution of planktonic foraminifera suggest that the bed formed from a complex sequence of events. A bolide impact nearby produced microtektites that sett1led to form a nearly pure layer at the base. Vaporized materials with anomalously high extraterrestrial components settled last, along with carbonate sediments. The entire bed became sparsely consolidated. Subsequently, another major disruptive event, perhaps a giant tsunami, partly reworked the initial deposit. Cohesive fragments of the original marker bed mixed with exotic materials were redeposited as lenticular bodies. This process also may have caused further mixing of Cretaceous and Tertiary microfossils, as observed at Beloc and elsewhere.     

New evidence on the size and possible effects of a late pliocene oceanic asteroid impact

Debris from a late Pliocene asteroid impact is spread across at least 600 kilometers of the ocean floor in the southeast Pacific. On the basis of iridium concentrations in sediments from six deep-sea cores, the asteroid diameter was at least 0.5 kilometer; the impacting projectile may have been one of the largest in the last few million years. The stratigraphic age of this impact is the same as that inferred for the onset of Northern Hemisphere glaciation.     

Glassy Objects (Microtektites?) from Deep-Sea Sediments near the Ivory Coast

Glassy objects of spherical, oval, dumbbell, teardrop, and irregular shapes have been found in a deep-sea sediment core taken off the Ivory Coast. They occur in a layer of sediment that was apparently deposited about 800,000 years ago. Their geographic location, appearance, and physical properties suggest that they are microtektites and that they are related to the tektite-strewn field of the Ivory Coast.     

A tsunami deposit at the cretaceous-tertiary boundary in Texas

At sites near the Brazos River, Texas, an iridium anomaly and the paleontologic Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary directly overlie a sandstone bed in which coarse-grained sandstone with large clasts of mudstone and reworked carbonate nodules grades upward to wave ripple-laminated, very fine grained sandstone. This bed is the only sandstone bed in a sequence of uppermost Cretaceous to lowermost Paleocene mudstone that records about 1 million years of quiet water deposition in midshelf to outer shelf depths. Conditions for depositing such a sandstone layer at these depths are most consistent with the occurrence of a tsunami about 50 to 100 meters high. The most likely source for such a tsunami at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary is a bolidewater impact.     

Fission track ages and ages of deposition of deep-sea microtektites

The Australasian and Ivory Coast deep-sea microtektites have fission track ages of 0.71 and 1.09 million years, respectively. These ages are in good agreement with the ages of deposition of the microtektites determined from paleomagnetic data. Both the fission track ages and ages of deposition of the microtektites agree with the potassium/ argon and fission track ages of tektites from the respective tektite strewn fields.     

Gradual dinosaur extinction and simultaneous ungulate radiation in the hell creek formation

Dinosaur extinction in Montana, Alberta, and Wyoming was a gradual process that began 7 million years before the end of the Cretaceous and accelerated rapidly in the final 0.3 million years of the Cretaceous, during the interval of apparent competition from rapidly evolving immigrating ungulates. This interval involves rapid reduction in both diversity and population density of dinosaurs. The last dinosaurs known are from a channel that contains teeth of Mantuan mammals, seven species of dinosaurs, and Paleocene pollen. The top of this channel is 1.3 meters above the likely position of the iridium anomaly, the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary.     

An archean impact layer from the Pilbara and Kaapvaal cratons

The Barberton greenstone belt of South Africa and the eastern Pilbara block of Western Australia provide information about Earth's surface environments between 3.2 and 3.5 billion years ago, including evidence for four large bolide impacts that likely created large craters, deformed the target rocks, and altered the environment. We have obtained identical single-zircon uranium-lead ages of 3470 +/- 2 million years ago for the oldest impact events from each craton. These deposits represent a single global fallout layer that is associated with sedimentation by an impact-generated tsunami and in Western Australia is represented by a major erosional unconformity.     

Ascent of dinosaurs linked to an iridium anomaly at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary

Analysis of tetrapod footprints and skeletal material from more than 70 localities in eastern North America shows that large theropod dinosaurs appeared less than 10,000 years after the Triassic-Jurassic boundary and less than 30,000 years after the last Triassic taxa, synchronous with a terrestrial mass extinction. This extraordinary turnover is associated with an iridium anomaly (up to 285 parts per trillion, with an average maximum of 141 parts per trillion) and a fern spore spike, suggesting that a bolide impact was the cause. Eastern North American dinosaurian diversity reached a stable maximum less than 100,000 years after the boundary, marking the establishment of dinosaur-dominated communities that prevailed for the next 135 million years.     

Impact theory of mass extinctions and the invertebrate fossil record

There is much evidence that the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary was marked by a massive meteorite impact. Theoretical consideration of the consquences of such an impact predicts sharp extinctions in many groups of animals precisely at the boundary. Paleontological data clearly show gradual declines in diversity over the last 1 to 10 million years in various invertebrate groups.Reexamination of data from careful studies of the best sections shows that, in addition to undergoing the decline, four groups (ammonites, cheilostomate beyozoans, brachiopods, and bivalves) were affected by sudden truncations precisely at the iridium anomaly that marks the boundary. The paleontological record thus bears witness to terminal-Cretaceous extinctions on two time scales: a slow decline unrelated to the impact and a sharp truncation synchronous with and probably caused by the impact.     

Iridium anomaly in the upper devonian of the canning basin, Western australia

A moderate iridium anomaly, about 20 times the local background, has been found in Upper Devonian rocks in the Canning Basin. It occurs at or near the Frasnian-Famennian boundary, which is known to be associated with a major massextinction event of global extent. The anomaly occurs in an extremely condensed limestone sequence laid down under quiet deepwater conditions. Its occurrence suggests a causal link with some form of meteoroid impact. Moreover, carbon isotope data indicate that a large reduction in biomass could have occurred at this level. However, the anomaly coincides with a stromatolite bed containing the fossil cyanobacterium Frutexites; iridium, platinum, iron, manganese, cobalt, arsenic, antimony, and cerium are preferentially concentrated in filaments of this organism, with concentrations ranging from two to five times that of the matrix. It is possible that Frutexites extracted these elements directly from seawater, without the need for their derivation from an extraterrestrial source.     

40Ar-39Ar Dating of the Manson Impact Structure: A Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary Crater Candidate

The mineralogy of shocked mineral and lithic grains in the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary claystone worldwide is most consistent with a bolide impact on a continent. Both the concentrations and sizes of these shocked grains are greatest in the western interior of North America. These data suggest that the Manson impact structure in north-central Iowa is a viable candidate for the K-T boundary impact event. Argon-40-argon-39 age spectrum dating of shocked microcline from the crystalline central uplift of the Manson impact structure indicates that there was severe argon-40 loss at 65.7 +/- 1.0 million years ago, an age that is indistinguishable from that of the K-T boundary, within the limits of analytical precision.     

Fullerenes in the 1.85-billion-year-old Sudbury impact structure

Fullerenes (C60 and C70) have been identified by laser desorption, laser desorption post-ionization, and high-resolution electron-impact mass spectrometry in shock-produced breccias (Onaping Formation) of the Sudbury impact structure in Ontario, Canada. The C60 isotope is present at a level of a few parts per million. The fullerenes were likely synthesized within the impact plume from the carbon contained in the bolide. The oxidation of the fullerenes during the 1.85 billion years of exposure was apparently prevented by the presence of sulfur in the form of sulfide-silicate complexes associated with the fullerenes.     

Paleomagnetic study of antarctic deep-sea cores

The magnetic inclinations and inten sities of about 650 samples from seven deepsea cores taken in the Antarctic were measured on a spinner magnetometer. This series of measurements provided a magnetic stratigraphy, based on zones of normally or reversally polar ized specimens for each core, which was then correlated with the magnetic stra tigraphy of Cox et al. (1). One core (V16-134) gave a continuous record of the paleomagnetic field back to about 3.5 million years. When selected samples were subject ed to alternatingfield demagnetization, most were found to have an unstable component that was removed by fields of 150 oersteds; all samples from two cores were partially demagnetized in a field of 150 oersteds. The average inclination in these two cores was then in good agreement with the average inclination of the ambient field for the latitude of the core site. It was also found that the intensities of the samples decreased at the points of reversal; this finding is to be expected if, as has been postulated by the dynamo theory, the intensity of the dipole field decreases to zero and builds again with opposite polarity. We believe that the magnetiza tion of the cores results from the pres ence of detrital magnetite, although other magnetic minerals also may be present. Four faunal zones (, X, , and ) have been recognized in these Antarctic cores on the basis of upward sequential disappearance of Radiolaria. The faunal boundaries and reversals consistently have the same relations to one another, indicating that they are both timedependent phenomena. Using previously determined times of reversal, one may date the following events in the cores: 1) Radiolarian faunal boundaries:-X, 2 million years; X-, 0.7 million years; -, 0.4 to 0.5 million years. These dates are in good agreement with ages previously extrapolated from radio metric dates. 2) Initiation of Antarctic diatom ooze deposition, approximately 2.0 mil-lion years ago. 3) First occurrence of ice- rafted detritus, approximately 2.5 million years ago. One can also calculate rates of sedi mentation, which vary in the cores studied from 1.1 to about 8.0 millimeters per 1000 years. Sedimentation rates for the Indian Ocean cores are higher than for the Bellingshausen Sea cores. The near coincidence of faunal changes and reversals in the cores suggests but does not prove a causal relation. We conclude from this study that paleomagnetic stratigraphy is a unique method for correlating and dating deep sea cores, and that future work with such cores may provide a complete or nearly complete record of the history of the earth's magnetic field beyond 4 million years.     

Evolution of the ratio of strontium-87 to strontium-86 in seawater from cretaceous to present

A detailed record of the strontium-87 to strontium-86 ratio in seawater during the last 100 million years was determined by measuring this ratio in 137 well-preserved and well-dated fossil foraminifera samples. Sample preservation was evaluated from scanning electron microscopy studies, measured strontium-calcium ratios, and pore water strontium isotope ratios. The evolution of the strontium isotopic ratio in seawater offers a means to evaluate long-term changes in the global strontium isotope mass balance. Results show that the marine strontium isotope composition can be used for correlating and dating well-preserved authigenic marine sediments throughout much of the Cenozoic to a precision of +/-1 million years. The strontium-87 to strontium-86 ratio in seawater increased sharply across the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary, but this feature is not readily explained as strontium input from a bolide impact on land.     

Accretion rate of extraterrestrial matter: iridium deposited 33 to 67 million years ago

Iridium measured in 149 samples of a continuous 9-meter section of Pacific abyssal clay covering the time span 33 to 67 million years ago shows a well-defined peak only at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary. In the rest of the section iridium ranges from a minimum concentration near 0.35 nanograms per gram in the Paleocene to a maximum near 1.7 in the Eocene; between 63 and 33 million years ago the mean iridium accumulation rate is approximately 13 nanograms per square centimeter per million years. Correction for terrestrial iridium leads to an extraterrestrial flux of9 +/- 3 nanograms of iridium per square centimeter per million years, and an estimated annual global influx of 78 billion grams of chondritic matter, consistent with recent estimates of the influx of dust, meteorites, and crater-producing bodies with masses ranging from 10(-13) to 10(18 )grams. Combining the recent flux of objects ranging in mass from 10(6) to 10(7) grams with the flux of 10(14) - to 10(15) -gram objects indicates that the number of objects is equal to 0.54 divided by the radius (in kilometers) to the 2.1 power. Periodic comet showers should increase the cometary iridium flux by a factor of 200 to 600 on a time scale of 1 to 3 million years; the predicted iridium maxima (more than 30 times background) are not present in the intervals associated with the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary or the tektiteproducing late Eocene events.     

Dinosaurs on the north slope, alaska: high latitude, latest cretaceous environments

Abundant skeletal remains demonstrate that lambeosaurine hadrosaurid, tyrannosaurid, and troodontid dinosaurs lived on the Alaskan North Slope during late Campanian-early Maestrichtian time (about 66 to 76 million years ago) in a deltaic environment dominated by herbaceous vegetation. The high ground terrestrial plant community was a mild- to cold-temperate forest composed of coniferous and broad leaf trees. The high paleolatitude (about 70 degrees to 85 degrees North) implies extreme seasonal variation in solar insolation, temperature, and herbivore food supply. Great distances of migration to contemporaneous evergreen floras and the presence of both juvenile and adult hadrosaurs suggest that they remained at high latitudes year-round. This challenges the hypothesis that short-term periods of darkness and temperature decrease resulting from a bolide impact caused dinosaurian extinction.     

Estimating duration and intensity of Neoproterozoic snowball glaciations from Ir anomalies

The Neoproterozoic glaciations supposedly ended in a supergreenhouse environment, which led to rapid melting of the ice cover and precipitation of the so-called cap carbonates. If Earth was covered with ice, then extraterrestrial material would have accumulated on and within the ice and precipitated during rapid melting at the end of the glaciation. We found iridium (Ir) anomalies at the base of cap carbonates in three drill cores from the Eastern Congo craton. Our data confirm the presence of extended global Neoproterozoic glaciations and indicate that the duration of the Marinoan glacial episode was at least 3 million, and most likely 12 million, years.