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Abstract We present the δ11B of well‐preserved brachiopod fossils coupled with geochemical modeling to examine how seawater boron responded to abrupt and dynamic climate changes in the Late Paleozoic. The Late Carboniferous, a time of major coal formation and glacioeustatic sea level changes, is characterized by relatively stable brachiopod δ11B of 15–17‰, similar to values seen in modern brachiopods. Brachiopod δ11B dropped by ~5‰ in the early Permian and then restabilized at a new value of 10‰ within a few million years. Mass balance models of seawater δ11B reproduced the overall trends in our brachiopod data but failed to capture the large drop in δ11B in the early Permian. Published seawater87Sr/86Sr and δ44/40Ca data based on brachiopod shells also shift to lower values in the early Permian, suggesting a common control on all three seawater isotope systems. The Permian terrestrial record of evaporites and eolian deposits suggests a prolonged reduced delivery of dissolved weathering products to the ocean, accounting for the change in seawater87Sr/86Sr. This reduced weathering, in turn, led to increased atmospheric CO2and lowered seawater pH, which may have significantly decreased major removal mechanisms for seawater calcium and boron leading to declines in both isotope systems. We propose that boron removal via coprecipitation in carbonates and adsorption onto clay minerals was significantly diminished due to a reduction in the availability of the borate aqueous species caused by lowered seawater pH.
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Abstract Chlorine, lithium, and boron are trace elements in rhyolite but are enriched in groundwater flowing through rhyolite because they tend to partition into the fluid phase during high‐temperature fluid‐rock reactions. We present a large data set of major element and δ37Cl, δ7Li, and δ11B compositions of thermal water and rhyolite from Yellowstone Plateau Volcanic Field (YPVF). The Cl/B, Cl/Li, δ37Cl (−0.2‰ to +0.7‰), and δ11B (−6.2‰ to −5.9‰) values of alkaline‐chloride thermal waters reflect high‐temperature leaching of chlorine, lithium, and boron from rhyolite that has δ37Cl and δ11B values of +0.1‰ to +0.9‰ and −6.3‰ to −6.2‰, respectively. Chlorine and boron are not reactive, but lithium incorporation into hydrothermal alteration minerals results in a large range of Cl/Li, B/Li, and δ7Li (−1.2‰ to +3.8‰) values in thermal waters. The relatively large range in δ7Li values of thermal waters reflects a large range of values in rhyolite. Large volumes of rhyolite must be leached to account for the chloride, lithium and boron fluxes, implying deep groundwater flow through rhyolite flows and tuffs representing Yellowstone's three eruptive cycles (∼2.1 Ma). Lower Cl/B values in acid‐sulfate waters result from preferential partitioning of boron into the vapor phase and enrichment in the near‐surface water condensate. The Cl/B, Cl/Li, δ7Li (−0.3‰ to +2.1‰), and δ11B (−8.0‰ to −8.1‰) values of travertine depositing calcium‐carbonate thermal waters which discharge in the northern and southern YPVF suggest that chlorine, lithium, and boron are derived from Mesozoic siliciclastic sediments which contain detrital material from the underlying metamorphic basement.
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Transition metal interactions with Lewis acids (M → Z linkages) are fundamentally interesting and practically important. The most common Z-type ligands contain boron, which contains an NMR active 11 B nucleus. We measured solid-state 11 B{ 1 H} NMR spectra of copper, silver, and gold complexes containing a phosphine substituted 9,10-diboraanthracene ligand (B 2 P 2 ) that contain planar boron centers and weak M → BR 3 linkages ([(B 2 P 2 )M][BAr F 4 ] (M = Cu (1), Ag (2), Au (3)) characterized by large quadrupolar coupling ( C Q ) values (4.4–4.7 MHz) and large span ( Ω ) values (93–139 ppm). However, the solid-state 11 B{ 1 H} NMR spectrum of K[Au(B 2 P 2 )] − (4), which contains tetrahedral borons, is narrow and characterized by small C Q and Ω values. DFT analysis of 1–4 shows that C Q and Ω are expected to be large for planar boron environments and small for tetrahedral boron, and that the presence of a M → BR 3 linkage relates to the reduction in C Q and 11 B NMR shielding properties. Thus solid-state 11 B NMR spectroscopy contains valuable information about M → BR 3 linkages in complexes containing the B 2 P 2 ligand.more » « less
