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Published March 9, 2001 | Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

A Short Duration of the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary Event: Evidence from Extraterrestrial Helium-3

Abstract

Analyses of marine carbonates through the interval 63.9 to 65.4 million years ago indicate a near-constant flux of extraterrestrial helium-3, a tracer of the accretion rate of interplanetary dust to Earth. This observation indicates that the bolide associated with the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction event was not accompanied by enhanced solar system dustiness and so could not have been a member of a comet shower. The use of helium-3 as a constant-flux proxy of sedimentation rate implies deposition of the K-T boundary clay in (10 ± 2) × 10^3 years, precluding the possibility of a long hiatus at the boundary and requiring extremely rapid faunal turnover.

Additional Information

© 2001 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received for publication 16 November 2000; accepted for publication 1 February 2001. We thank J. Kirschvink and T. Raub for providing the STW samples (sample collection funded by NSF EAR9807741) and F. Robaszynski for discussion on the STW section. Funded by NASA and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation.

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