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.     

Evidence for life on Earth more than 3850 million years ago

A recent study by Mojzsis et al., (Nature 384, 55, 1996) found evidence of life in rocks in Greenland estimated by new isotopic data to be more than 3800 million years old. The author examines this study in relation to studies conducted on rocks between 3250 and 3800 million years old and presents reasons to agree and disagree with the interpretation of data.     

Mineralogic evidence for an impact event at the cretaceous-tertiary boundary

A thin claystone layer found in nonmarine rocks at the palynological Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in eastern Montana contains an anomalously high value of iridium. The nonclay fraction is mostly quartz with minor feldspar, and some of these grains display planar features. These planar features are related to specific crystallographic directions in the quartz lattice. The shocked quartz grains also exhibit asterism and have lowered refractive indices. All these mineralogical features are characteristic of shock metamorphism and are compelling evidence that the shocked grains are the product of a high velocity impact between a large extraterrestrial body and the earth. The shocked minerals represent silicic target material injected into the stratosphere by the impact of the projectile.     

Oxygen isotope constraints on the origin of impact glasses from the cretaceous-tertiary boundary

Laser-extraction oxygen isotope and major element analyses of individual glass spherules from Haitian Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary sediments demonstrate that the glasses fall on a mixing line between an isotopically heavy (delta(18)O = 14 per mil) high-calcium composition and an isotopically light (delta(18)O = 6 per mil) high-silicon composition. This trend can be explained by melting of heterogeneous source rocks during the impact of an asteroid (or comet) approximately 65 million years ago. The data indicate that the glasses are a mixture of carbonate and silicate rocks and exclude derivation of the glasses either by volcanic processes or as mixtures of sulfate-rich evaporate and silicate rocks.     

Seawater strontium isotopic variations from 2.5 million years ago to the present

Measurements of marine carbonate samples indicate that during the past 2.5 million years the (87)Sr/(86)Sr ratio of seawater has increased by 14 x 10(-5). The high average rate of increase of (87)Sr/(86)Sr indicates that continental weathering rates were exceptionally high. Nonuniformity in the rate of increase suggests that weathering rates fluctuated by as much as +/-30 percent of present-day values. Some of the observed shifts in weathering rates are contemporaneous with climatic changes inferred from records of oxygen isotopes and carbonate preservation in deep sea sediments.     

Shocked quartz in the cretaceous-tertiary boundary clays: evidence for a global distribution

Shocked quartz grains displaying planar features were isolated from Cretaceous- Tertiary boundary clays at five sites in Europe, a core from the north-central Pacific Ocean, and a site in New Zealand. At all of these sites, the planar features in the shocked quartz can be indexed to rational crystallographic planes of the quartz lattice. The grains display streaking indicative of shock in x-ray diffraction photographs and also show reduced refractive indices. These characteristic features of shocked quartz at several sites worldwide confirm that an impact event at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary distributed ejecta products in an earth-girdling dust cloud, as postulated by the Alvarez impact hypothesis.     

A tropical rainforest in Colorado 1.4 million years after the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary

An extremely diverse lower Paleocene (64.1 million years ago) fossil leaf site from Castle Rock, Colorado, contains fossil litter that is similar to the litter of extant equatorial rainforests. The presence of a high-diversity tropical rainforest is unexpected, because other Paleocene floras are species-poor, a feature generally attributed to the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction. The site occurs on the margin of the Denver Basin in synorogenic sedimentary rocks associated with the rise of the Laramide Front Range. Orographic conditions caused by local topography, combined with equable climate, appear to have allowed for the establishment of rainforests within 1.4 million years of the K-T boundary.     

Triploblastic animals more than 1 billion years ago: trace fossil evidence from india

Some intriguing bedding plane features that were observed in the Mesoproterozoic Chorhat Sandstone are biological and can be interpreted as the burrows of wormlike undermat miners (that is, infaunal animals that excavated tunnels underneath microbial mats). These burrows suggest that triploblastic animals existed more than a billion years ago. They also suggest that the diversification of animal designs proceeded very slowly before the appearance of organisms with hard skeletons, which was probably the key event in the Cambrian evolutionary explosion, and before the ecological changes that accompanied that event.     

Abrupt climate events 500,000 to 340,000 years ago: evidence from subpolar north atlantic sediments

Subpolar North Atlantic proxy records document millennial-scale climate variations 500,000 to 340,000 years ago. The cycles have an approximately constant pacing that is similar to that documented for the last glacial cycle. These findings suggest that such climate variations are inherent to the late Pleistocene, regardless of glacial state. Sea surface temperature during the warm peak of Marine Isotope Stage 11 (MIS 11) varied by 0.5 degrees to 1 degrees C, less than the 4 degrees to 4.5 degrees C estimated during times of ice growth and the 3 degrees C estimated for glacial maxima. Coherent deep ocean circulation changes were associated with glacial oscillations in sea surface temperature.     

Samarium-146 in the early solar system: evidence from neodymium in the allende meteorite

A carbon-chromite fraction from the Allende C3V chondrite shows strikingly large isotopic enrichments of neodymium-142 (0.47 percent) and neodymium- 143 (36 percent). Both apparently formed by alpha decay of samarium-146 and samarium-147 (half-lives 1.03 x 10(8) and 1.06 x 10(11) years), but the isotopic enrichment was greatly magnified by recoil of residual nuclei into a carbon film surrounding the samarium-bearing grains. These data provide an improved estimate of the original abundance of extinct samarium-146 in the early solar system [(146)Sm/(144)Sm = (4.5 +/- 0.5) x 10(-3)], higher than predicted by some models of pprocess nucleosynthesis. It may be possible to use this isotopic pair as a chronometer of the early solar system.     

A short duration of the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary event: evidence from extraterrestrial helium-3

Analyses of marine carbonates through the interval 63.9 to 65.4 million years ago indicate a near-constant flux of extraterrestrial helium-3, a tracer of the accretion rate of interplanetary dust to Earth. This observation indicates that the bolide associated with the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction event was not accompanied by enhanced solar system dustiness and so could not have been a member of a comet shower. The use of helium-3 as a constant-flux proxy of sedimentation rate implies deposition of the K-T boundary clay in (10 +/- 2) x 10(3) years, precluding the possibility of a long hiatus at the boundary and requiring extremely rapid faunal turnover.     

Upper Pleistocene Radiocarbon-Dated Artefacts from the Northern Yukon: Man was in Beringia 27,000 years ago

The evidence presented here indicates that man lived in the eastern part of the Beringian refugium before the peak of the late Wisconsin glaciation (27). He had sharp, stone tools intended for working bone and means of breaking large mammoth bones. Probably he hunted mammoth and caribou, and prepared the skins of the caribou for use as clothing and perhaps shelter. It is possible that he migrated to southern North America, although evidence for the presence of man there prior to the peak of the Wisconsin glaciation is at present in dispute (28). We do not know whether his culture should be classified as Mousteroid or Aurignacoid in Müller-Beck's scheme (23), whose criteria are taken from stone implements of which we have none, although we infer their presence. Our data suggest that in Beringia, and therefore probably in Siberia and the Far East, the transition from Middle Paleolithic to Upper Paleolithic levels of technology occurred at a relatively early date. This raises the larger question: Did the transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic occur simultaneously in many parts of the world, or did it begin in and spread from one area (23)?     

A major food web component in the orinoco river channel: evidence from planktivorous electric fishes

Deep-water sampling of the Orinoco River main channel resulted in the collection of an unexpectedly high abundance and diversity of specialized fishes. Twenty-eight of the more than 60 species collected belong to the Gymnotiformes(New World electric or knife fishes). One of the more numerous of these, a recently described species of the genus Rhabdolichops, consumes large numbers of very small planktonic Crustacea and insect larvae. These items are captured in the very swift, turbid, and deep waters of the Orinoco. Although the strong dependence of the river food web on terrestrial and floodplain food sources is well known, the specialized capabilities of Rhabdolichops and of other fishes that occur with it indicate a significant extension of the river food web into the main channel.     

Impact event at the Permian-Triassic boundary: evidence from extraterrestrial noble gases in fullerenes

The Permian-Triassic boundary (PTB) event, which occurred about 251.4 million years ago, is marked by the most severe mass extinction in the geologic record. Recent studies of some PTB sites indicate that the extinctions occurred very abruptly, consistent with a catastrophic, possibly extraterrestrial, cause. Fullerenes (C60 to C200) from sediments at the PTB contain trapped helium and argon with isotope ratios similar to the planetary component of carbonaceous chondrites. These data imply that an impact event (asteroidal or cometary) accompanied the extinction, as was the case for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event about 65 million years ago.     

Extinct (129)I in halite from a primitive meteorite: evidence for evaporite formation in the early solar system

Halite crystals from the Zag H3-6 chondrite contain essentially pure (monoisotopic) xenon-129 ((129)Xe) produced in the early history of the solar system by the decay of short-lived iodine-129 ((129)I) (half-life = 15.7 million years). Correlated release of (129)Xe and (128)Xe, produced artificially from (127)I by neutron irradiation, corresponds to an initial ((129)I/(127)I) ratio of (1.35 +/- 0.05) x 10(-4), close to the most primitive early solar system value. If the (129)Xe was produced by in situ decay, then the halite formed from an aqueous fluid within 2 million years of the oldest known solar system minerals.