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Research at
Gallaudet University
2005 - 2006

Chemical Analyses of Fossil Resins (amber) and Modern Plant Exudates Using C-13 (carbon-13 isotope) Solid State (SS) Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and H-1 (proton) NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance)

Status: Completed Begin date: November, 2005 End date: July, 2006

Description

There are different classes of exudates, of which the two largest are resins, whose chemical structure is built up from hydrocarbon terpenes (the highly polymerized counterpart of resins is known as amber); and gums, whose chemical structure is built up from carbohydrates. Other plant exudates include gum resins, latexes, and kinos. The immediate goals of the study were to characterize exudates in this novel fashion and to develop new diagnostic tools for plant identification and, possibly, classification. We analyzed ambers (approximately 20 samples) as well as modern exudates (approximately 100 samples) using C-13 SS NMR. This project has refined our knowledge of fossil and modern plant exudates by doubling our published library of C-13. The significance of this database is, twofold: 1) Improves our ability to identify the botanical origin of fossil exudates (cases A-B, below) and suggests novel ways to classify plants. 2) Enhances our understanding of paleoenvironments and paleoclimates entombed in fossil exudates during different intervals in Earth's history.

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