Carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in meteoritic organic matter: indicators of alteration processes on the parent asteroid

Macromolecular organic materials in chondrites display significant variations in carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes. In recent years, these variations have been interpreted as a record of aqueous and thermal processing on asteroids shortly after the birth of the Solar System. In this paper we review and summarize the key data and main interpretative approaches related to this study area. Armed with these methods we attempt to reinterpret the whole rock chondrite data set in the literature. Received 31 March 2004, accepted 30 October 2004