23
large quantities of metal ions.
A foreign metal may thus be
transported to the bone as a serum protein complex and there
exchange with Ca
Arrhenius,
2+ or mg2*,
Bramlette and Picciotto
(1957),
in an analy-
sis of skeletal fish debris from pelagic sediments of late
Pleistocene to Recent Age,
radioactive elements,
reported a high content of naturally
several per cent of rare earth elements,
0.6 - 1.5 per cent of zinc,
0.1 - 0.5 per cent of copper,
0.15 per cent of tin, and 0.03 - 0.1 per cent of lead.
0.05 -
By
separation of the organic from the apatite phases of the fish
debris,
they demonstrated that rare earths and most of the Sr
and Ba occurred in the apatite structure and that Zn, 8n,
Pb,
Ti, Cu, Ag and much of the Mg, Al, Cr and Ni occurred in the
organic phase in the cavities of the bone structure.
The
debris was identified as derived from various genera of bathypelagic fish.
The ashed residue of bathypelagic fish caught
alive in tow nets did not reveal such high concentrations of
heavy metals.
The concentration seems to have occurred after
the death of the organisms.
Fish debris from sediments laid
down within the past ten thousand years had already achieved
the high levels of concentration of heavy metals found in
From the results of this inveatigation,
would appear that in a marine environment,
it
organic detritus
t
Tertiary strata.