Organic geochemical evidence for global fires at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary

Details Organic geochemical evidence for global fires at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary Organic geochemical evidence for global fires at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary

Mar 1989

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1989natur.338...57v&link_type=abstract

Nature (ISSN 0028-0836), vol. 338, March 2, 1989, p. 57-60. Research supported by DOE.

Biology

11

Aromatic Compounds, Combustion Products, Cyclic Hydrocarbons, Forest Fires, Geochemistry, Clays, Paleobiology, Polymerization, Polymers, Soot

Scientific paper

If wildfires ensued from a meteorite impact on earth around the time of the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) extinction, a group of high-molecular weight parent polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) characteristic of combustion, predominating over their alkyl homologues, should be present in K/T boundary samples known to contain soot. In this paper, K/T samples from New Zealand, Italy, and Denmark are compared with those from above and below the boundary, and enhanced PAH contents and distribution profiles are found that reflect a pyrolytic origin. The data thus provide the first detailed organic-molecular evidence for the combustion source of organic carbon at the K/T sites.

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