Dear Friends and Colleagues,

After almost an year from the Meeting in Castelnovo ne'Monti (Italy), in which was laid the foundations of TE.CO.S., that would like to be the coordination and research group for all the people that investigate in to this new matter, and use the spherules to understand the Earth's History, today we meet altogether, even if not all physically, to this 31 International Geological Meeting in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), to make the report of the previous activities and the future programs.

Actually the main problem of our Research Group is the absence of its collocation in an international project and to have no one or more sponsor, which could provide a financial contribution for its development and the preparation of the next Meeting.

Various Organizations and Foundations were contacted, which don't find in our studies a vintage. This doesn't discourage me and I think that in short term I'll can provide some news.

About the specific aspects of the Group we invite the members to provide proposals whether for the linkage to international projects or to liven up the contacts between the members.

In this first year of TE.CO.S. many things happened, now we can see what was made:

• Creation of the TE.CO.S. (Terrestrial and Cosmic Spheres) in the First months of 1999, with the participation of 30 members from 14 different countries in the five continents.
• First International Meeting, at Castelnovo ne'Monti (Italy), with 15 participants from 8 countries, 17 works presented and important field trips on the K/T and Eocene/Oligocene boundaries near Massignano and Triassic/Jurassic boundary near Pania di Corfino.
• The 8 full papers and 9 abstracts presented in the Castelnovo meeting were sent to the reefers, first of the sending to Prof. Mastsuda (Japan) for the publication in a number of the Geochemical Journal.
• Publication of the Acta of the Budapest 1998 (Hungary) meeting of IGCP384 under the Aegis of TECOS and thanks to the help of Prof. Csaba Detre and The Cultural Ministry of Hungary.
• Creation of the Internet site www.tecos.org, thanks to the work of Dr Nicolodi (Italy), with the publication of the Castelnovo Acta, some new interesting unedited works, special pages for Cosmic and Terrestrial Spheres, Geological boundaries, Impact Craters, all provided by pictures and scientific data. From April 2000 it received 180 visits. The pages of this site are still few, but the arguments that can developed, with our collaboration, are more. In this site there is also a large references list about spherules (with over 2700 records), made with the collaboration of Dr Gyorgy Don (Hungary). As this list need a continue work. I ask you to send more references. It will be interesting collecting all the articles and images for the on-line consulting, so it will be possible helping the researches and the comparisons for more studies.
• Second International meeting in Brazil, during the 31IGC, with the participation of 20 conveners from 8 countries and the presentation of 17 works.
• The collaboration between the partner countries of TECOS: now are in starting a Hungarian - Italian and Estonian - Italian collaboration.

The motto of the TECOS research group is "Quae ratiost igitur ??" (Lucretio, De Rerum Natura, VI, 848 – 861): what is this science?? This motto must direct us to research and individuate the origin of the "spherules".

Spherules are already known and have been studied from certain regions of the Earth: the Baltic and Scandinavian area, Central Europe, Mediterranean region, Central and Southern Africa, Central and Eastern Asia, North America, Caribbean region, Brazil, Australia, Antarctica. From these regions spherules are known in various chronologically well documented formations with a wide range in spherule abundance. The occasion to investigate the possibilities to use the spherule occurrences as a new tool for the geological correlation is given. The complex comparative studies of the spherules and their host sediments are very important for a global correlation program.

The research of the spherules has involved a large interdisciplinary collaboration, including stratigraphy, geochemistry, (micro)mineralogy, micropaleontology, paleomagnetic research, planetology, meteoritics, meteorology, glaciology and sedimentology in general. Radiometric and isotopic research will certainly gain in importance in the future investigation of spherules.

From the point of view of extraterrestrial geology micrometeorites and extraterrestrial spherules are at the present time, the only real tools for interplanetary correlation, since in all likelihood they have to occur on every planet of the Solar System.

During the history of the Earth the global occurrence of spherules seems to have altogether six abundance peaks (by extrapolation of certain sporadic local result):

Late Devonian

Permian-Triassic transition

Triassic-Jurassic transition

K/T boundary

Upper Eocene

Pleistocene

It is obvious that the investigation of the spherules has to be global. This program is aimed at developing and organizing these global investigations. By way of this program the first international organization of a new scientific field will be organized.

We found the spherules, but now we must create an order in this new research field.

The investigations will be focused on the genetic classification of spherules, and the investigation of their distribution in various terrestrial strata. The program will set as aim the global investigations.

The first step in the worldwide investigations is to find reliable methods to distinguish the various genetic types. It seems that the impact and extraterrestrial types would be the global tools for correlation, because the related events are globally detected. (Great impacts, traversing meteorite and extraterrestrial dust clouds).

The future of this association will see the reaches of new targets:

• The increasing of the collaboration with the partner countries, for a good exchange of science and technique.
• Programming the third meeting of TECOS (that will be probably in Hungary).
• Creation of a discussion newsgroup on Internet, for a fast science exchange.
• Organization of the first spherule videoconference, using the Internet possibilities.
• Collaboration with an international journal, for publishing the TECOS works.
• The realization of a CD – ROM (with an annual revision), for a large diffusion, with the full international bibliography about the spherule research and a first photo archive of the most important microspherule shapes.

In this program are focused various arguments: it's possible to submit new ideas and made discussion for obtaining new research lines or developing the active ones.

We thanks all the participants that we see here for their presence, we hope that they like these words and would like to receive from them many contribution to the TECOS research and discussion.

Thanks

The President of TECOS: Alessandro Colombetti (Italy)

The Conveners in the 31IGC: Gilberto Albertao (Brazil)

Csaba Detre (Hungary)