Abstract
The organic matter in carbonaceous chondrites potentially records a succession of chemical histories that started with reactions in the interstellar medium, followed by reactions that accompanied the formation and evolution of the early solar nebula, and, ultimately, ended with reactions driven by hydrothermal and metamorphic alteration in the meteorite parent bodies. Recent analysis of a broad suite of organic matter isolates (IOM) from many different chondrite classes, groups, and types using NMR and XANE reveal clearly defined reaction pathways that appear to radiate from a simple molecular precursor. We also find, however, that the isotopic signatures of IOM do not correlate in any simple way with reaction history.
