Tektites in cretaceous-tertiary boundary rocks on Haiti and their bearing on the Alvarez impact extinction hypothesis

Details Tektites in cretaceous-tertiary boundary rocks on Haiti and their bearing on the Alvarez impact extinction hypothesis Tektites in cretaceous-tertiary boundary rocks on Haiti and their bearing on the Alvarez impact extinction hypothesis

Nov 1991

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1991jgr....9620879i&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research (ISSN 0148-0227), vol. 96, Nov. 25, 1991, p. 20,879-20,905.

Physics

42

Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary, Extinction, Impact Melts, Rare Earth Elements, Tektites, Geochemistry, Haiti, Platinum, Rocks, Spherules

Scientific paper

Observational and geochemical data for glass objects recently discovered, by Izett et al. (1990), in K-T boundary rocks on the island of Haiti are presented. The presence of tektites, which are of terrestrial impact origin, in the same bed with a Pt-metal abundance anomaly and shocked mineral grains enormously strengthens the impact component of the Alvarez K-T impact extinction hypothesis. Shocked quartz grains in samples of the Haitian K-T boundary marker bed are about the same size as those at the K-T boundary sites in western North America. Petrographic observations indicate that the K-T marker bed on Haiti is not a primary air fall unit composed entirely of impact ejecta. It contains a small volcanogenic component of locally derived material admixed with the impact ejecta during deposition on the seafloor. The major and trace element composition of the Haitian tektites, in particular, the high Rb and REE content, suggests that the target material melted during the K-T impact was sedimentary with an average composition of andesite, not mafic or ultramafic oceanic crust.

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