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Impact Event at the Permian-Triassic Boundary: Evidence from Extraterrestrial Noble Gases in Fullerenes
Luann Becker,1*Robert J. Poreda,2Andrew G. Hunt,2Theodore E. Bunch,3Michael Rampino4
The Permian-Triassic boundary (PTB) event, which occurred about
251.4 million years ago, is marked by the most severe massextinction
in the geologic record. Recent studies of some PTBsites indicate that
the extinctions occurred very abruptly, consistentwith a catastrophic,
possibly extraterrestrial, cause. Fullerenes(C60 to
C200) from sediments at the PTB contain trapped heliumand
argon with isotope ratios similar to the planetary componentof
carbonaceous chondrites. These data imply that an impact event(asteroidal or cometary) accompanied the extinction, as was thecase
for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event about 65 millionyears
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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