Triterpenols from sediments of Santa Monica Basin, Southern California Bight, U.S.A.

Abstract

The triterpenol geochemistry of the Santa Monica Basin from the Southern California Borderland, off the U.S.A., is described from the study of two sets of trap deployments, five box cores (≈30 cm) and a hydroplastic core (≈1 m). The biogenic sources and diagenetic stability of the triterpenols are discussed. The 17β(H), 21β(H)-hopanols (22R isomer) occur in the carbon number range from 30 to 32 and their abundance is nearly uniform in the shallow sediment sections. However, the three hopanols follow the order of abundance, C32 > C31 ≅ C30, in deeper sections. Their concentrations spans from trace levels to 156 μg/g organic carbon (<15 ng to 7 μg/g dry sediment). Tetrahymanol (gammaceran-3β-ol) has been identified in all the samples except in one set of trap particles collected at 100 m water depth, from trace level (<1 μg) to 215 μg/g organic carbon (<20 ng to 9 μg/g dry sediment). Diplopterol is also detected in trace amounts in some samples. The triterpenols in the trap material generally increase with the water column depth and decrease with the subbottom depth in the sediment cores. The extended hopanols are either degradation products of polyhydroxybacteriohopanes or are biosynthesized by bacteria. Tetrahymanol is probably the only suggested biological precursor of gammacerane (the reduced counterpart of tetrahymanol), which has been recognized in numerous crude oils and lithified sediments. Although it has been reported earlier from Green River Shale and from a residual Pleistocene lake sediment, tetrahymanol has so far been positively identified from recent marine sediments only in two recent studies. The decreasing content of tetrahymanol in sedimentary depth profiles in the Santa Monica Basin would favor an origin for this compound in the water column or at the sediment surface. The ubiquitous occurrence of this compound throughout the study area suggests that this triterpenol most probably originates from primitive organisms (protozoa, bacteria?), hitherto not identified or, more likely, not yet analyzed for their lipid composition.