Thanks David, Anybody here have a larger image of this KT fossil meteorite?
good hunting, Ed Man and Impact in the Americas PS - Saw the message where Jack Schmitt was confused with someone else, and glad someone made the correction. --- David Weir <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Here's a photo to go with the story: > > http://meteoritestudies.com/KTFOSSIL.JPG > > David > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Sky & Telescope, March 1999, p. 22: Piece of a > Killer Asteroid ? > > > > Like finding a stray bullet at a crime scene, a > researcher believes he has uncovered > > a long-sought chunk of the impactor thought to > have snuffed out 70 percent of the > > species of life on Earth 65 million years ago. > Scientists found the "smoking gun" in > > 1990: a 180-kilometer-wide circular structure > centered beneath the town of Puerto > > Chicxulub on the coast of Mexico's Yucatán > Peninsula. But no piece of the impactor > > had surfaced. > > Geochemist Frank T. Kyte (University of > California, Los Angeles) has been studying > > a core sample from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean > containing dark clay marking the > > boundary of the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods > (the K-T boundary). As Kyte > > describes in Nature for November 19, 1998, the > clay layer included a 4-millimeter-wide > > piece of lighter-colored clay. Upon splitting open > the nugget, he discovered a fossil > > meteorite. More detailed examination of this > sedimentary pearl revealed that it contains > > high concentrations of iron oxides, principally > hematite. > > While the mineralogy of the fossil meteorite has > undoubtedly changed over time, Kyte > > reports that the amounts of iron, chromium, and > iridium are nevertheless close to the > > ranges seen in carbonaceous chondrites, a common > meteorite type. Yet the specimen > > has one significant compositional oddity: it has > 1,000 times more gold than chondritic > > meteorites commonly have, a curiosity that Kyte > finds puzzling. > > Because the ocean-floor sediments at the K-T > boundary accumulated over perhaps as > > much as 500,000 years, there is no way to prove > that this truly is a piece of the > > K-T impactor. However, a meteoritic impact is most > consistent with Kyte's analysis; > > he largely discounts the possibilities that the > material is interplanetary dust or > > cometary debris. Moreover, he thinks it quite > conceivable that a piece of the asteroid > > that struck the Yucatán Peninsula survived the > blast and landed 9,000 kilometers away. > > ______________________________________________ > Meteorite-list mailing list > Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
