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RETRACTED ARTICLE: Unaltered cosmic spherules in a 1.4-Gyr-old sandstone from Finland

Nature volume 395, pages 146–148 (1998)Cite this article

A Retraction to this article was published on 20 May 2004

A Retraction to this article was published on 20 May 2004

Abstract

Micrometeorites—submillimetre-sized particles derived from asteroids and comets1,2,3,4,5—occur in significant quantities in deep sea sediments1,2,4, and the ice sheets of Greenland6,7 and Antarctica8,9. The most abundant micrometeorites are cosmic spherules3, which contain nickel-rich spinels10 that were crystallized and oxidized during atmospheric entry, therefore recording the oxygen content in the uppermost atmosphere10,11,12. But the use of micrometeorites for detecting past changes in the flux of incoming extraterrestrial matter, and as probes of the evolution of the atmosphere, has been hampered by the fact that most objects with depositional ages higher than 0.5 Myr show severe chemical alteration2. Here we report the discovery of unaltered cosmic spherules in a 1.4-Gyr-old13,14,15 sandstone16,17 (red bed) from Finland. From this we infer that red beds, a common lithology in the Earth's history, may contain substantial unbiased populations of fossil micrometeorites. The study of such populations would allow systematic research on variations in the micrometeorite flux from the early Proterozoic era to recent times9 ( a time span of about 2.5 Gyr), and could help to better constrain the time when the atmospheric oxygen content was raised to its present level18,19,20.

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Figure 1: Secondary (a, b), and backscatter (c, d) electron micrographs of cosmic spherules from Murronmäki with (a, c) a porphyritic, and (b, d) a barred-olivine texture.

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Grund, F. Bartschat, U. Heitmann, M. Flucks and D. Kettrup for technical assistance, and A. Bischoff, E. Marttila, A. Putnis, U. Schärer, and H. Strauss for discussions. Field work was supported by a DAAD-Finish Academy of Science exchange program (A.D. and L.J.P.) and we acknowledge additional support by DFG.

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Author notes

  1. Ansgar Greshake

    Present address: Museum für Naturkunde, Humboldt-Univesität zu Berlin, Invalidenstrasse 43, D-10115, Berlin, Germany

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Planetologie, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Wilhelm-Klemm-Strasse 10, D-48149, Münster, Germany

    Alexander Deutsch & Ansgar Greshake

  2. Geological Survey of Finland, PO Box 96, Espoo, FIN-02151, Finland

    Lauri J. Pesonen & Pekka Pihlaja

Authors
  1. Alexander Deutsch
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  2. Ansgar Greshake
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  4. Pekka Pihlaja
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexander Deutsch.

Additional information

We earlier reported finding unaltered cosmic spherules in samples from the Satakunta sandstone, Finland1. At that time, we had found 18 spherules in 5 kg of material, and an additional 100 spherules were recovered from the 60–125 m heavy mineral separates of the samples. Rocks collected later from the same and nearby sites had no spherules in them2. We have subsequently concluded that the cosmic spherules1 were not part of the Satakunta sandstone samples. The total number of spherules we found during processing in the Muenster laboratory (about 120) is in itself a compelling argument for an exceptional contamination.

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Deutsch, A., Greshake, A., Pesonen, L. et al. RETRACTED ARTICLE: Unaltered cosmic spherules in a 1.4-Gyr-old sandstone from Finland. Nature 395, 146–148 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/25943

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