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Optica Publishing Group
  • Applied Spectroscopy
  • Vol. 60,
  • Issue 10,
  • pp. 1111-1120
  • (2006)

In Situ Infrared Microspectroscopy of ∼850 Million-Year-Old Prokaryotic Fossils

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Abstract

<i>In situ</i> infrared (IR) and Raman microspectroscopy have been conducted on Neoproterozoic, organic-walled microfossils (prokaryotic fossils) in doubly polished, petrographic thin sections in order to detect their spectral signatures. The microfossils are very well preserved and occur in black chert from the ∼850 million-year-old Bitter Springs Formation, Northern Territory, Australia. Raman microspectroscopy on two species of microfossils, one a filament and the other a coccoid, shows disordered peaks (D peak, 1340 cm<sup>−1</sup>) and graphite peaks (G peak, 1600 cm<sup>−1</sup>), indicating that they consist of disordered carbonaceous materials. IR micro-mapping results of the filament reveal that the distributions of peak heights at 2920 cm<sup>−1</sup> (aliphatic CH<sub>2</sub>), 1585 cm<sup>−1</sup> (aromatic C–C), and 1370 cm<sup>−1</sup> (aliphatic CH<sub>3</sub>) match the shape of the filamentous microfossil. These results suggest that IR microspectroscopy can be used for <i>in situ</i> characterization of organic polar signatures that morphologically indicate microfossils embedded in chert by using doubly-polished rock (petrographic) thin section samples. Further, these methods can be applied to controversial microfossil-like structures to test their biogenic nature.

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