Rifting and Mafic Magmatism in the Hebridean Basins

Acknowledgements and Funding Research in the BPIP was supported by NERC grant GR9/1581, and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. H. Rollinson and E. Gazel are thanked for helpful and constructive criticisms, particularly of the modelling aspects of the paper, and T. Rooney is thanked for invaluable scientific and editorial assistance.Peer reviewedPostprin

Scientific drilling of the Boltysh impact crater, Ukraine

Introduction: The Boltysh crater has been known for several decades and was first drilled in the 1960s as part of a study of economic oil shale deposits. Unfortunately, the cores were not curated and have been lost. We have re-drilled the impact crater and have recovered a near continuous record of ~400 m of organicrich sediments together with 15 m of suevite

Lake sedimentological and ecological response to hyperthermals : Boltysh impact crater, Ukraine

Acknowledgements Initial drilling of the Boltysh meteorite crater was funded by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grant NE/D005043/1. The authors are extremely grateful to the valuable scientific contributions of S. Kelley and I. Gilmour. The constructive and critical reviews by M. Schuster and an anonymous reviewer greatly helped to improve this manuscript.Peer reviewedPostprin

Frontier exploration and the North Atlantic Igneous Province : new insights from a 2.6 km offshore volcanic sequence in the NE Faroe–Shetland Basin

Acknowledgements and Funding This work was funded by Chevron. The authors would like to acknowledge the Chevron West of Shetlands team along with the Joint Venture partners OMV, Faroe Petroleum and Indemitsu for access to data along with permission to publish this study. PGS is thanked for access to the Corona Ridge Regional Geostreamer (CRRG) data and permission to publish the seismic line. The paper was improved thanks to insightful reviews by S. M. Jones and A. Saunders, which substantially improved an earlier draft. J. Still and F. Thompson gave invaluable technical support at the University of Aberdeen, and K. Wall helped with real-time cuttings analysis.Peer reviewedPostprin

Organic geochemistry of the crater-fill sediments from Boltysh impact crater, Ukraine

The Boltysh impact crater, is a complex structure formed on the basement rocks of the Ukrainian shield which has been dated at 65.17±0.64 Ma [1]. The Boltysh crater has been know for several decades and was originally drilled in the 1960s-1980s in a study of economic oil shale deposits. Unfortunately, the cores were not curated and have been lost. However we have recently re-drilled the impact crater and have recovered a near continuous record of ~400 m of organic rich sediments deposited in a deep isolated lake which overlie the basement rocks spanning a period ~10 Ma. At 24km diameter, Boltysh will not have contributed substantially to the worldwide devastation at the end of the Cretaceous. However, the precise age of the Boltysh impact relative to the Chicxulub impact and its location on a stable low lying coastal plain which allowed formation of the postimpact crater lake make it a particularly important locality. After the impact, the crater quickly filled with water in a short marine phase but returned to fresh water which persisted for >10Ma [2]. These strata contain a valuable record of Paleogene environmental change in central Europe, and one of very few terrestrial records of the KT event. This pre-eminent record of the Paleogene can help us to answer several related scientific questions including the relative age of Boltysh compared with Chicxulub, recovery from the impact, and later climate signals. The organic geochemistry and playnology indicate main inputs to be algal and higher plant within most of the core although there are some marked changes in inputs in some sections. A number of carbon isotope excursions are also present within the core which are currently being further investigated

The Effect of Salt and Pyrophosphate on the Structure of Meat

Our obective was to determine whether or not salt and pyrophosphate have the same effect on the structure of pieces of meat as they have on isolated myofibrils. Blocks of pig M. longissimus dorsi were incubated in solutions of sodium chloride at pH 5.5 or sodium chloride plus sodium pyrophosphate at pH 5.5 or 8.0. The blocks were obtained from fresh (24h post- mortem) or aged (72h post-mor tem) muscle and incubated for 5 or 24h with minimal agitation. There was considerable uptake of water by the tissue especially at the higher pH and longer times. Electron microscopy of the meat incubated in salt plus pyrophosphate at pH 8.0 revealed complete or nearly complete extraction of the A-band to a depth of at least one fibre from the surface. In meat incubated in salt plus pyrophosphate at pH 5.5 the extraction of the A-band was 1 ess complete and appeared to occur only near the surface. In salt alone no extraction of the A-band occurred. Swelling of myofibrils close to the surface could be detected either by a reduction of density or by greater separation of filaments . Break-up of the Z-line, probably due to mechanical disruption imposed by swelling of myofibrils, was a common feature of the salt treatments. Mitochondria near the surface were grossly swollen, especially with salt plus pyrophosphate at pH 8.0 At low pH amorphous material was observed inside and outside the cell membrane, but at high pH filamentous material was present in these areas

Two large meteorite impacts at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary

The end-Cretaceous mass extinction has been attributed by most to a single asteroid impact at Chicxulub on the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. The discovery of a second smaller crater with a similar age at Boltysh in the Ukraine has raised the possibility that a shower of asteroids or comets impacted Earth close to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary. Here we present palynological and δ13C evidence from crater-fill sediments in the Boltysh impact crater. Our analyses demonstrate that a post-impact flora, formed on the ejecta layer, was in turn devastated by the K-Pg event. The sequence of floral recovery from the K-Pg event is directly comparable with that in middle North America. We conclude that the Boltysh crater predated Chicxulub by ∼2–5 k.y., a time scale that constrains the likely origin of the bodies that formed the two known K-Pg craters

Rhinosporidium seeberi: a human pathogen from a novel group of aquatic protistan parasites.

Rhinosporidium seeberi, a microorganism that can infect the mucosal surfaces of humans and animals, has been classified as a fungus on the basis of morphologic and histochemical characteristics. Using consensus polymerase chain reaction (PCR), we amplified a portion of the R. seeberi 18S rRNA gene directly from infected tissue. Analysis of the aligned sequence and inference of phylogenetic relationships showed that R. seeberi is a protist from a novel clade of parasites that infect fish and amphibians. Fluorescence in situ hybridization and R. seeberi- specific PCR showed that this unique 18S rRNA sequence is also present in other tissues infected with R. seeberi. Our data support the R. seeberi phylogeny recently suggested by another group. R. seeberi is not a classic fungus, but rather the first known human pathogen from the DRIPs clade, a novel clade of aquatic protistan parasites (Ichthyosporea)