Hopanoic

The effects of deep burial diagenetic process are generally limited in the Westbury Formation, as indicated by: (1) The organics which have high n-alkane odd over even preference indices (in the C-27-C-35 n-alkane homologues), low temperature isomers in the steroidal and hopanoic fractions and the presence of unsaturated n-alkanes.

This behavior has, for instance, allowed the identification of geochemical markers as those of the hopanoic triterpenes series (52-64), which arc of importance in interpreting the evolution and origin of organic matter in sediments (Fig. 3.3).

The concentrations of the hopanoic acids represent only a very small fraction of the equivalent hopane hydrocarbon originally in the sample.