Alistair Seddon, in collaboration with Boris Zimmermann at NMBU, has just published a technical comment in relation to a paper that published earlier this year that claimed to show direct evidence of enhanced UV-B radiation during the end Permian mass extinction using FTIR spectroscopy of pollen grains.
Our main concern with the original analysis was that the signal processing methods used in the paper were not appropriate for the fossil samples because the signal in the infrared spectra from the fossil pollen grains was very weak, and could not be differentiated from interference of water vapour. We wanted to point out that, whilst the signal processing methods that the authors used are appropriate when there is strong infrared absorbance in the region of interest (e.g. in modern or sub-fossil pollen grains), they do not perform well on these very old fossil sporomorphs.
You can access the comment and the authors’ response to our comment here:
Alistair W. R. Seddon, and Boris Zimmermann.Comment on “Dying in the Sun: Direct evidence for elevated UV-B radiation at the end-Permian mass extinction”.Sci. Adv.9,eadi0570(2023).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adi0570