Large Pt anomaly in the Greenland ice core points to a cataclysm at the onset of Younger Dryas.

One explanation of the abrupt cooling episode known as the Younger Dryas (YD) is a cosmic impact or airburst at the YD boundary (YDB) that triggered cooling and resulted in other calamities, including the disappearance of the Clovis culture and the extinction of many large mammal species. We tested the YDB impact hypothesis by analyzing ice samples from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) ice core across the Bølling-Allerød/YD boundary for major and trace elements. We found a large Pt anomaly at the YDB, not accompanied by a prominent Ir anomaly, with the Pt/Ir ratios at the Pt peak exceeding those in known terrestrial and extraterrestrial materials. Whereas the highly fractionated Pt/Ir ratio rules out mantle or chondritic sources of the Pt anomaly, it does not allow positive identification of the source. Circumstantial evidence such as very high, superchondritic Pt/Al ratios associated with the Pt anomaly and its timing, different from other major events recorded on the GISP2 ice core such as well-understood sulfate spikes caused by volcanic activity and the ammonium and nitrate spike due to the biomass destruction, hints for an extraterrestrial source of Pt. Such a source could have been a highly differentiated object like an Ir-poor iron meteorite that is unlikely to result in an airburst or trigger wide wildfires proposed by the YDB impact hypothesis.

Constraints on melt movement beneath the East Pacific Rise from 230Th-238U disequilibrium.

We report 230Th-238U disequilibrium data on mid-ocean ridge basalts recovered 5 to 40 kilometers off the ridge axis near 9 degrees 30'N of the East Pacific Rise. These data indicate near-symmetrical eruptions of normal mid-ocean ridge basalts (NMORBs) and incompatible element-enriched mid-ocean ridge basalts (EMORBs) as far as 20 kilometers off axis. Our results suggest large-scale subsurface lateral transport of NMORB melt at 19 to 21 centimeters per year and also provide constraints on the petrogenesis of EMORBs of off-axis origin.