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Science 23 February 2001:
Vol. 291. no. 5508, pp. 1530 - 1533
DOI: 10.1126/science.1057243
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Reports

Impact Event at the Permian-Triassic Boundary: Evidence from Extraterrestrial Noble Gases in Fullerenes

Luann Becker,1* Robert J. Poreda,2 Andrew G. Hunt,2 Theodore E. Bunch,3 Michael Rampino4

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.

1 Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Box 351310, Seattle, WA 98195-1310 USA.
2 Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA.
3 Space Science Division, Ames Research Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA.
4 New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA, and NASA, Goddard Institute of Space Studies, New York, NY 10025, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lbeck00{at}u.washington.edu or lbecker{at}soest.hawaii.edu

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