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PIS-01 General contributions to impact structures
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Natural fullerenes from Permian-Triassic boundary in the tethys Sea, Himalayas, India
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Gopalakrishnarao Parthasarathy, National Geophysical Research Institute (India)
N Bhandari, Physical Research Laboratory (India)
Ajit Chand Kunwar, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (India)
M Vairamani, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (India)
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The Permian-Triassic (P-Tr) boundary (∼251 Ma) sections in Spiti valley, Himalaya represent sedimentary deposits of a shallw sea and exhibit a sharp negative transition of δ13C in total carbonaceous matter. Siberian volcanism and impact of a bolide have been postulated as two probable causes leading to this global mass extinction during the P-Tr transition. However, it has been difficult to arrive at a clear understanding of the P-Tr mass extinction event as there are only a very few outcrops available on the continent. The presence of the P-Tr section in the sedimentary strata of the Spiti valley and their geochemical and carbon-isotopic characteristics have been well documented . In this paper we present new data on mass and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic studies on the acid-resistant carbonaceous matter extracted from the boundary horizon in Attargoo and Lalung sections of the Spiti valley, Himalaya, India. The amount of total organic carbon measured in these sections are varying from 1.46 to 2.50 wt %. The mass spectra yielded mass peaks at 720 amu, showing the presence of C<60> fullerene in the P-Tr- boundary samples of Spiti valley. However, we did not observe any inclusions of helium-3 in the fullerene cage. The implications of these experimental results on C60 fullerenes will be discussed in context of the impact hypothesis.
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