¹Morgan F. Schaller, ¹Megan K. Fung, ²James D. Wright, ¹Miriam E. Katz, ^2,3Dennis V. Kent
Science 354, 225-229 Link to Article [DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf5466]
¹Earth and Environmental Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, NY 12180, USA.
²Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.
³Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA.
Reprinted with permission from AAAS

Extraterrestrial impacts have left a substantial imprint on the climate and evolutionary history of Earth. A rapid carbon cycle perturbation and global warming event about 56 million years ago at the Paleocene-Eocene (P-E) boundary (the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) was accompanied by rapid expansions of mammals and terrestrial plants and extinctions of deep-sea benthic organisms. Here, we report the discovery of silicate glass spherules in a discrete stratigraphic layer from three marine P-E boundary sections on the Atlantic margin. Distinct characteristics identify the spherules as microtektites and microkrystites, indicating that an extraterrestrial impact occurred during the carbon isotope excursion at the P-E boundary.

^1,2Ai-Cheng Zhang, ¹Qiu-Li Li, ^2,3Hisayoshi Yurimoto, ³Naoya Sakamoto, ¹Xian-Hua Li, ⁴Sen Hu, ⁴Yang-Ting Lin, ¹Ru-Cheng Wang
Nature Communications 7, 12844 Link to Article [doi:10.1038/ncomms12844]
¹State Key Laboratory for Mineral Deposits Research, School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210046, China
²Department of Natural History Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan
³Isotope Imaging Laboratory, Creative Research Institution Sousei, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 001-0021, Japan
⁴Key Laboratory of Earth and Planetary Physics, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China

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^1,2Yuan Li, ¹Rajdeep Dasgupta, ¹Kyusei Tsuno, ³Brian Monteleone, ³Nobumichi Shimizu
Nature Geoscience 9, 781–785 Link to Article [doi:10.1038/ngeo2801]
¹Department of Earth Science, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, MS 126, Houston, Texas 77005, USA
²Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China
³Department of Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543, USA

We currently do not have a copyright agreement with this publisher and cannot display the abstract here

^1,2Justin Filiberto et al. (>10)*
Meteoritics & Planetary Science (in Press) Link to Article [DOI: 10.1111/maps.12680]
¹Department of Geology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois, USA
²School of Environment, Earth, and Ecosystem Sciences, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, UK
Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons
*Find the extensive, full author and affiliation list on the publishers website

Multiple observations from missions to Mars have revealed compelling evidence for a volatile-rich Martian crust. A leading theory contends that eruption of basaltic magmas was the ultimate mechanism of transfer of volatiles from the mantle toward the surface after an initial outgassing related to the crystallization of a magma ocean. However, the concentrations of volatile species in ascending magmas and in their mantle source regions are highly uncertain. This work and this special issue of Meteoritics & Planetary Science summarize the key findings of the workshop on Volatiles in the Martian Interior (Nov. 3–4, 2014), the primary open questions related to volatiles in Martian magmas and their source regions, and the suggestions of the community at the workshop to address these open questions.

^1,2Gordon R. Osinski,¹Richard A. F. Grieve,¹Anna Chanou,¹Haley M. Sapers
Meteoritics & Planetary Science (in Press) Link to Article [DOI: 10.1111/maps.12728]
¹Department of Earth Sciences/Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
²Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons

The term “suevite” has been applied to various impact melt-bearing breccias found in different stratigraphic settings within terrestrial impact craters. Suevite was coined initially for impact glass-bearing breccias from the Ries impact structure, Germany, which is the type locality. Various working hypotheses have been proposed to account for the formation of the Ries suevite deposits over the past several decades, with the most recent being molten-fuel-coolant interaction (MFCI) between an impact melt pool and water. This mechanism is also the working hypothesis for the origin of the bulk of the Onaping Formation at the Sudbury impact structure, Canada. In this study, the key characteristics of the Ries suevite, the Onaping Formation and MFCI deposits from phreatomagmatic volcanic eruptions are compared. The conclusion is that there are clear and significant lithological, stratigraphic, and petrographic observational differences between the Onaping Formation and the Ries suevite. The Onaping Formation, however, shares many key similarities with MFCI deposits, including the presence of layering, their well-sorted and fine-grained nature, and the predominance of vitric particles with similar shapes and lacking included mineral and lithic clasts. These differences argue against the viability of MFCI as a working hypothesis for genesis of the Ries suevite and for a required alternative mechanism for its formation.