Paper: Lethbridge Herald City: Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada Date: Wednesday, December 14, 1955 Pages: 1, continued on 3
The Left Hand...Corner... Meteoric Bombardment In Remote Past Possible - Ostrich Egg Cups
TWO huge crater believed caused by meteors plunging to earth some 500,000,000 years ago have been discovered within 100 miles of Canada's capital by the Dominion Observatory.
The pre-historic pockmarks, now filled with rock and earth, are near Franktown, about 20 miles southwest of Ottawa, and Holleford, approximately 20 miles northwest of Kingston, Ont. They were spotted by the observatory during examination of aerial photographs of Canada taken from RCAP planes at a height of 10,000 feet.
The discoveries bring to five the known number of craters in Canada of meteoric origin.
The most famous is the Chubb crater, now known as the new Quebec crater, in northern Quebec about 130 miles south of Hudson strait. Others were found 40 miles west of the northern Lebrador village of Hebron and in Algonquin national
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park outside of Brent, Ont., 50 miles east of North Bay.
The Holleford crater is about 1 1/2 miles in diameter and has a depth of some 100 feet - big enough to swallow up the entire downtown area of a medium-sized city of a couple of hundred thousand population. It is covered with palaeozoic sediments, estimated to be at least 500,000,000 years old, which have concealed most of its original shape.
Apart from its circular shape, the only other definite evidence that the crater is of meteoric origin is that the inner slopes are steeper than the outer and no volcanic activity has been found in this section of Canada.
"It appears that there is a definite possibility that this may be an ancient meteoric cavity nearly filled with sediments," Dr. C. S. Beals, Dominion astronomer, said in an interview. "Gravity observations tend to support the view that it is a depression of considerable depth filled in and covered with sediments."
The Franktown crater is a vague, shallow depression with little topographical relief. However, it is circular with a diameter of three-quarters of a mile.
Dr. Beals said the Franktown cavity also is covered with sediments which are at least 500,000,000 years old. However, the evidence of meteoric origin is not as strong as at Holleford.
The observatory's search for meteor craters represents an extension of its research efforts. Some 200,000 aerial photographs of parts of Ontario and Quebec now have been studied and the observatory plans to examine photographs covering all sections of the country.
Dr. Beals said the object of the study is to determine whether the earth at one time was bombarded by meteors. The information would assist astronomers in their studies of the universe.
"It is well-known fact that the moon's surface is pitted with thousands of craters." he said. "While several theories have been put forward to account for their origin, the hypothesis which now is most generally favorized is that they were caused by meteoric bombardment thousands of years ago.
"It is because of the similarity of these lunar crates to ones on earth that astronomers are turning attention to the possibility that at one time the earth may have been subjected to similar bombardment. The earth's atmosphere would introduce conditions causing earthly crater to be much more obliterated than their counterparts on the moon, and hence they have eluded detection."
The Chubb crater, discovered in 1951, is two miles in diameter and is believed to have been caused by a meteor which crashed to earth as recently as 50,000 years ago. Very little is known about the crater near Hebron which was discovered in 1954. It is 175 yards in diameter and believed of meteoric origin.
The crater near Brent is two miles in diameter and was discovered in 1952. It is believed to have been caused by a meteor some 400,000,000 years ago.
The Brent, Franktown and Holleford craters are filled with sediment. The Chubb crater and the small one near Hebron are not.
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Clear Skies, Mark Bostick Wichita, Kansas http://www.meteoritearticles.com http://www.kansasmeteoritesociety.com http://www.imca.cc
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