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We use hydrodynamic modelling combined with known data on mantle melting behaviour to examine the potential for decompression melting of lithosphere beneath a large terrestrial impact crater. This mechanism may generate sufficient quantity of melt to auto-obliterate the crater. Melting would initiate almost instantaneously, but the effects of such massive mantle melting may trigger long-lived mantle up-welling that could potentially resemble a mantle hotspot. Decompression melting is well understood; it is the main method advocated by geophysicists for melting on Earth, whether caused by thinned lithosphere or hot rising mantle plumes. The energy released is largely derived from gravitational energy and is outside (but additive to) the conventional calculations of impact modelling, where energy is derived solely from the kinetic energy of the impacting projectile, be it comet or asteroid. The empirical correlation between total melt volume and crater size will no longer apply, but instead there will be a discontinuity above some threshold size, depending primarily on the thermal structure of the lithosphere. We estimate that the volume of melt produced by a 20 km diameter iron impactor travelling at 10 km/s may be comparable to the volume of melt characteristic of terrestrial large igneous provinces (V10 6 km 3 ); similar melting of the mantle beneath an oceanic impact was also modelled by Roddy et al. [Int. J. Impact Eng. 5 (1987) 525]. The mantle melts will have plume-like geochemical signatures, and rapid mixing of melts from sub-horizontal sub-crater reservoirs is likely. Direct coupling between impacts and volcanism is therefore a real possibility that should be considered with respect to global stratigraphic events in the geological record. We suggest that the end-Permian Siberian Traps should be reconsidered as the result of a major impact at V250 Ma. Auto-obliteration by volcanism of all craters larger than V200 km would explain their anomalous absence on Earth compared with other terrestrial planets in the solar system. ß

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Orthophragminids are larger benthic foraminifera (LBF) and, together with the nummulitids, were the major rock-forming foraminifera from the middle Paleocene to the late Eocene. Today, porous, LBF-bearing, Paleogene limestones, which occur globally from the Pacific and Atlantic margins of the Americas to the Indo-Pacific, form potentially valuable oil reservoirs, and their biota have formed the basis of the definition of three paleobiogeographic provinces, namely those of the Americas, Tethys, and the Indo-Pacific. The orthophragminids of the western part of the Tethyan Province have been studied extensively, however, the other provinces are less well characterized, and until now the origin and paleogeographic development of this group have not been fully articulated. New material described here allows the clear definition of a fourth, South African paleobiogeographic province, and, when combined with refined biostratigraphic dating based on new material from the Americas, Europe, South Asia and SE Asia, enables their paleogeographic and biostratigraphic evolution to be determined. Critically, the occurrence of cosmopolitan planktonic foraminifera (PF) within LBF assemblages enables the first occurrences of various LBF forms within each province to be dated relative to well-calibrated planktonic zones (PZ). From this, we infer that, like the previously studied lepidocyclinids and nummulitids, the orthophragminids originated in the Americas during the Paleocene, probably between the late Danian (PZ P1c, 63.5 Ma) and the early Selandian (PZ P3a, 61.6 Ma). By the middle Paleocene, the orthophragminids had migrated across the Atlantic to the previously isolated West African coast at the extreme of Tethys, probably during global sea-level low stands at 60.3 Ma and again at 56.4 Ma. Subsequently, the American Province again became isolated. In the Tethys, the orthophragminid migrations followed two paths: northeastward through the Tethyan corridor in the late Paleo-cene (Thanetian), and south in the earliest Eocene (Ypresian) to South Africa. The Tethyan forms evolved during the Eocene into many lineages, which in turn migrated, after a few million years of their first appearances into the Indo-Pacific, where they again became isolated and diversified further. Meanwhile the South African forms remained similar to their American ancestors in both small size and external ornamentation, while their internal evolution closely followed that of Tethys forms, as exhibited by three species of Nemkovella and Discocyclina described here from South Africa (Nemkovella mcmilliana n. sp., Discocyclina davyi n. sp. and D. africana n. sp.).

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