282 



Sediments 



Table 25 



Carotin oiD Pigments in Phytoplankton and Sediments "^ 



Location 



Depth of 

 Water, 

 meters 



Depth in 

 Sediment, 



Ppm (Dry Weight) 



Carotene 



Xanthophyll 



PHYTOPLANKTON 



Prorocentrum 

 micans 



Nitzschia 

 closterium 



Rhizosolenia 



styliformis 

 Biddulphia 

 sinensis 



SEDIMENTS 



2.6 



659 



350 



22.6 



5785 



650 



'From Fox, Updegraff, and Novelli (1944). 



first with a grant from the Geological Society 

 of America and later with a larger one from 

 Shell Development Company. The pro- 

 cedure was the rather conventional chromato- 

 graphic technique as used by Hunt (1953) 

 on petroleum, by Hunt, Stewart, and Dickey 

 (1954) on various organic minerals and ex- 

 tracts from sedimentary rocks, and by Smith 

 (1952, 1954) on extracts from Recent sedi- 

 ments. In this technique the paraffin- 

 naphthene hydrocarbon fraction is eluted 

 with ^-heptane, the aromatic hydrocarbon 

 fraction with benzene, and the asphaltic 

 fraction, which contains the bulk of the 

 oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur compounds 

 with pyridine, acetone, and methanol. The 

 strongly absorbed materials, which are not 

 eluted from the chromatographic column 

 under the conditions of the analysis, are de- 

 termined by difference and reported as 

 "remaining on alumina." 



Infrared spectra of the paraffin-naphthene 

 and the aromatic fractions are typical of 

 these materials and are closely similar to 

 spectra of the same fractions separated from 

 a Pliocene crude oil from Los Angeles Basin 



(Fig. 227). Checks were also made of ultra- 

 violet spectra and elemental composition 

 (Table 26). In the first work (Orr and 

 Emery, 1956a) the hydrocarbon fractions 

 (paraffin-naphthene and especially aromatic) 

 included some sulfur as an impurity that 

 had to be removed or corrected for. In later 

 work sulfur was removed by treatment with 

 sodium cyanide before chromatography, 

 and improvements were also made on the 

 method of extraction of soluble organic 

 matter from the sediment (Orr and Emery, 

 1956^). Invariably the asphaltic fractions 

 are black tarry solids. Aromatic fractions 

 are pale-yellow waxy solids fluorescing 

 strongly under ultraviolet fight. The paraffin- 

 naphthene fractions are colorless waxy 

 solids that at 50° C melt enough to flow. 

 Only one sample (294 to 340 cm in Santa 

 Catalina Basin) was a liquid at room tem- 

 perature; this paraffin-naphthene fraction 

 amounted to only 8.6 ppm of dry sediment, 

 according well with the observation of Trask 

 and Wu (1930) that hquid hydrocarbons in 

 Recent sediments are rare and less than 30 

 ppm. Optical activity, rotation, may be 



