ated chemostratigraphic calibration of the Oligocene-Miocene boundary at 24.0 0.1 Ma from the CRP-2A drill core, Ross Sea, Antarctica.
Gary S. Wilson, Geology Department, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand; et al. Pages 1043-1046.
This article summarizes some important new results from a the multinational Cape Roberts Project that obtained three cores from up to 1000 m deep into the sea floor on the edge of Antarctica. One of the cores fortuitously recovered a thick interval of strata from the interval containing an important boundary (Oligocene-Miocene) in the geological record. The exact age of the Oligocene-Miocene boundary is currently debated, and suggested ages vary by more than a million years. The age of this boundary in the Cape Roberts project core was established very precisely at 24.0 million years using an integration of multiple dating methods. This age provides an important new calibration point for the geological time scale. It is particularly exciting that the new calibration point should be derived from Antarctica because dating of strata from Antarctica has proven historically difficult and this result flags a potential "coming of age" in our ability to date strata in Antarctica.

Organic chemical differentiation within fossil plant cell walls detected with X-ray spectromicroscopy.
C. Kevin Boyce, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA; et al. Pages 1039-1042.
The walls of the water-conducting cells of vascular plants possess several concentric layers, each no more than a few microns thick, made up of differing concentrations of the phenolic compound lignin and of carbohydrates such as cellulose. X-ray spectromicroscopy allows imaging of the spatial distribution of different types of organic chemistry at a submicron scale. We have used this emerging technique to demonstrate that multiple chemically distinct layers are
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Contact: Ann Cairns
acairns@geosociety.org
303-357-1056
Geological Society of America
21-Oct-2002

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