Chemical fractionation of siderophile elements in impactites from Australian meteorite craters

The abundance pattern of siderophile elements in terrestrial and lunar impact melt rocks was used extensively to infer the nature of the impacting projectiles. An implicit assumption made is that the siderophile abundance ratios of the projectiles are approximately preserved during mixing of the projectile constituents with the impact melts. As this mixture occurs during flow of strongly shocked materials at high temperatures, however there are grounds for suspecting that the underlying assumption is not always valid. In particular, fractionation of the melted and partly vaporized material of the projectile might be expected because of differences in volatility, solubility in silicate melts, and other characteristics of the constituent elements. Impactites from craters with associated meteorites offer special opportunities to test the assumptions on which projectile identifications are based and to study chemical fractionation that occurred during the impact process

Trace-element composition of Chicxulub crater melt rock, K/T tektites and Yucatan basement

The Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary Chicxulub impact is the best preserved large impact in the geologic record. The Chicxulub crater has been buried with no apparent erosion of its intracrater deposits, and its ejecta blanket is known and is well preserved at hundreds of localities globally. Although most of the molten material ejected from the crater has been largely altered, a few localities still preserve tektite glass. Availability of intra- and extracrater impact products as well as plausible matches to the targeted rocks allows the comparison of compositions of the different classes of impact products to those of the impacted lithologies. Determination of trace-element compositions of the K/T tektites, Chicxulub melt rock, and the targeted Yucatan silicate basement and carbonate/evaporite lithologies have been made using instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Some sample splits were studied with both techniques to ensure that inter-laboratory variation was not significant or could be corrected. The concentration of a few major and minor elements was also checked against microprobe results. Radiochemical neutron activation analysis (RNAA) was used to determine Ir abundances in some samples

Iridium abundance measurements across bio-event horizons in the fossil record

Geochemical measurements have been performed on thousands of rock samples collected across bio-event horizons using Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) for about 40 common and trace elements and radiochemical isolation procedures for Ir. On selected samples, Os, Pt and Au were also radiochemically determined. These studies have encompassed the time interval from the Precambrian-Cambrian transition to the Late Eocene impact (microspherule) horizons. Our early work strengthened the Alvarez impact hypothesis by finding the Ir (PGE) anomaly at the K-T boundary in continental sedimentary sequences. In collaborations with paleontologists, weak to moderately string Ir anomalies have been discovered at the Frasnian-Famennian boundary in Australia, in the Early Mississippian of Oklahoma, at the Mississipian-Pennsylvanian boundary of Oklahoma and Texas, and in the Late Cenomanian throughout the western interior of North America and on the south coast of England to date. We have found no compelling evidence for an impact related cause for these anomalies although PGE impact signatures in the two Late Cenomanian anomalies could be masked by the strong terrestrial mafic to ultramafic overprint. Thus far, our evidence for extinction events older than the terminal Cretaceous does not support recent hypotheses which suggest that impacts from cyclic swarms of comets in the inner Solar system were responsible for the periodic mass extinctions. 50 refs., 7 figs., 3 tabs