Dataset Information

Knighton, Jade L; ORCID: 0009-0004-5520-7719
Retallack, Gregory J
Lucarelli, Jamie K
Zhu, Zhicai
Defliese, William F
Tripati, Aradhna K

Carbonate clumped-isotope (Δ47) thermometry can record primary pedogenic temperatures as well as post-depositional thermal resetting. We report data from fourteen carbonate samples collected from the Permian Bernal Formation and the Triassic Anton Chico Member at Bernal Mesa, New Mexico. Apparent temperatures range from 10.9 ± 3.2 to 92.9 ± 4.6 °C. Two Permian samples yield low apparent temperatures (10.9 and 18.8 °C) and depleted calculated water oxygen isotope compositions, and because they are stratigraphically below the thermally altered samples, probably represent post Mesozoic groundwater rather than original paleosol temperatures. The other twelve samples yield 52.4–92.9 °C and are interpreted as variably reset during burial. Forward models using the disordered calcite-reordering framework of Hemingway and Henkes (2021), conditioned on a prescribed Late Cretaceous peak-burial time and subsequent cooling, yield maximum burial temperatures of approximately 164–178 °C for most of the burial-reset population. These temperatures imply approximately 4.1–6.7 km of overburden for geothermal gradients of 25–30 °C km-1 and are constructed using regional Laramide exhumation onset and cooling at 75–80 Ma. The study demonstrates the potential of Δ47 reordering models in continental red-bed successions for the Permian-Triassic boundary strata in the southern Western Interior.

Knighton, J. L., Retallack, G. J., Lucarelli, J. K., Zhu, Z., Defliese, W. F., Tripati, A. K., 2026. Clumped Archive for Bernal Mesa Permo-Triassic Paleosols, Version 1.0. Interdisciplinary Earth Data Alliance (IEDA). https://doi.org/10.60520/IEDA/114615. Accessed 2026-09-15.

2026-09-08

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International [CC-BY-4.0]

NSF RISE-228198

Coverage Scope: Regional (Continents, Oceans)
Geographic Location: New Mexico, Bernal Mesa, Anton Chico

clumped isotopes, geochemistry, uplift, burial

2026-09-11

Dataset