Crater Name Location Latitude Longitude Diameter (km) Age (Ma) Exposed Drilled Targed Rock** Bolid Type*** Barringer: Arizona, U.S.A. N 35° 2' The Interstate 40 Granular zircon in impact environments has long been recognized but remains poorly understood due to lack of experimental data to identify mechanisms involved in its genesis. terrain as viewed from space on this date. The … This impact happened when the Neanderthals were still in Europe and Homo sapiens were just emerging and entering Europe. The overturned flap is thickest on the southern side of the crater. Le Meteor Crater, ou cratère Barringer, reste ainsi à ce jour le cratère météoritique le plus étudié et visité au monde. Reports of the National Center for Science Education, Grieve R.A.F., Robertson P.B., IMPACT STRUCTURES IN CANADA, the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, February 1975. The material of the floor of Meteor Crater was easy to dig and very soon the shaft reaches 181 feet (55 m) in … View of the Barringer impact crater from a distance (yellow dot on the image above) Photo: G. Osinski, University of Western Ontario Location: Off the side of the road approximately 2 kilometers from the visitor center Scale: Crater diameter is approximately 1.2 kilometers. Meteor Crater is about 60 km east of Flagstaff and 29 km west of Winslow in the United States ‘ northern Arizona desert. (2016 The Barringer Crater Company). (1908) The Meteor Crater of Canyon Diablo, Arizona; its history, origin, and associated meteoric irons. U.S. Geological Survey, Astrogeology Science Center, Kieffer S. Shock Metamorphism of the Coconino Sandstone at Meteor Crater Thesis 1971, Kring David A., Guidebook to the Geology of Barringer Meteorite Crater, Arizona (a k a Meteor Crater), The 70th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society, August 2007. Barringer, D. M., 1906, Coon Mountain and its crater: Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, v. 57, p. 861-886. Meteor Crater in Arizona (USA) contains abundant evidence of shock metamorphism, including shocked quartz, the high-pressure polymorphs coesite and stishovite, diaplectic SiO2 glass, and lechatelierite (fused SiO2). Originally it was named "Crater Mound" and "Coon Butte". surrounding terrain, perhaps in part due to its altered mineralogic The diameter of the crater is relatively small and is about 1.2 km long and 175 meters deep. The presence of millions of tons of finely pulverized silica, which could only have been created by enormous pressure. Very few occurrences of diaplectic glass are observed. However, foot traffic at this interesting site may have scarred General Area: This best known of all impact craters is 60 km ESE of Flagstaff, AZ on a flat plain south of the Little Colorado River. Susan Werner Kieffer Buchwald, V.F. Microcrystalline coesite in class 2 rocks occurs in symplektic regions on quartz grain boundaries that were regions of initial stress and energy concentration, or in sheared zones within the grains. Within the crater is about 240 m (800 ft) of rubble that covers the crater floor. The absence of any naturally occurring volcanic rock in the vicinity of the crater. The crater has been known for several centuries, but until the early 1900s it was believed to be a geological structure of volcanic origin. NEW CONTRAINTS ON IMPACT PROCESSES AT METEOR CRATER: EJECTA EMPLACEMENT AND FORMATION OF IMPACT MELTS AND METALLIC SPHERULES. Its age is about 38 million years. a Coesite is a form (polymorph) of silicon dioxide SiO2 that is formed when very high pressure (2–3 gigapascals), and moderately high temperature (700 °C or 1,300 °F), are applied to quartz. In November 1967, it was designated as a National Natural Landmark. Correlations between drill holes show rim uplift of at least 16 m at a distance of 30 m from the crater walls. Toroweap – 260 my – yellowish shoreline sandstone – Permian; Kaibab – 250 my – cream coloured dolomite and sandstone. mile) diameter, 174-meter (570-feet) deep hole in the flat-lying desert Merrill also pointed to the undisturbed rock beds below the crater, which proved that the force which created the crater did not come from below (Merrill 1908). The interpretation of the drill data suggests that relatively little erosion has occurred since the formation of the crater. Barringer Crater, also known as “Meteor Crater,” is a 1,300-meter (0.8 T. A.Gaither, J. J. Hagerty, J. F. McHone, and H. E. Newsom, CHARACTERIZATION OF IMPACT EJECTA DEPOSITS FROM METEOR CRATER, ARIZONA. Lake Mistastin. The drilling has shown that the overturned flap with its inverted stratigraphy is generally continuous out to about 400 m beyond the rim crest. Barringer-krateret, der også kaldes Meteor Crater er et typisk mindre nedslagskrater i Arizona, USA, der har en diameter på 1.200 meter og en dybde på 170 meter. It shows the crater much as a lunar crater might All three techniques are in agreement: The crater was created about 50,000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch, when the local climate on the Colorado Plateau was much cooler and damper. Crater View: Daniel Barringer’s sectional view of Meteor Crater including 1376 foot deep shaft at base used in an attempt to locate the non-existent primary meteorite. These conclusions were championed by geologist George P. Merrill. The meteorite was a coarse octahedrite, average composition: 92% Fe, 7% Ni with Co, P and other trace elements (Buchwald, 1975). The crater has a diameter of 1,200 m (3,900 ft) and current depth of 170 m with a 45-metre high rim. The fact that even these days the crater is clearly shaped is very easy to explain. Erosion has not yet exposed the fractured rocks buried outside of the crater. (1991) used in situ production of 10-berilyum and 26-aluminum to determine a minimum age of 49200 +/- 1700 years. The majority of the ejecta blanket forms in the north east, downrange, direction. The discovery of fragments of the Canyon Diablo meteorite, including fragments within the breccia deposits that partially fill the structure, and a range of shock metamorphic features in … Barringer est un cratère d'impact sur la face cachée de la Lune. The crater center is filled with rubble lying above crater bedrock with 210–240 m. One of the crater’s interesting features is its jointed (squared-off) outline, which is thought to be caused by existing regional joints (cracks) at the impact site in the strata. The zircon grains occur as aggregates of sub-micrometer neoblasts in highly shocked Coconino Sandstone (CS) comprised of lechatelierite. Barringer Crater. 1300 meter in diameter en ongeveer 170 meter diep. Coesite was first synthesized by Loring Coes Jr., a chemist at the Norton Company, in 1953. b Stishovite is an extremely rare mineral forming only from the impact of a meteorite through the metamorphism of Quartz at extremely high temperatures. We're now going to head around the crater rim in a clockwise fashion. The rim of the 1.19 kilometre diameter Barringer Crater is still well defined, even after approximately 49 thousand years of erosion. It is the largest impact crater yet discovered in the United States, and one of the best preserved on earth. the 1890s geologic studies here played a leading role in developing an Morning sun illumination is from the The Barringer Crater is one of the youngest impact sites on this planet and the effects of the impact still remain in situ. Parmi les cratères météoritiques, le Meteor Crater, ou cratère Barringer, en Arizona (États-Unis), fut l'un des plus controversés. Meteor Crater in the northern Arizona desert of the United States is considered easily the best-preserved meteorite impact crater on Earth. Flight Center. The relation of the glass to the coesite and quartz suggests that the glass was formed by inversion of stishovite formed above 350 kb on release to lower pressure. Electron backscatter diffraction shows that each grain consists of multiple domains, some with boundaries disoriented by 65° around <110>, a known {112} shock-twin orientation. in the solar system. His claims was not proven until 1960 when astro scientist Eugene M. Shoemaker could confirm Barringer's hypothesis due to some special minerals found in the crater. and lightened the terrain too. The Barringer Crater Company is a family-owned enterprise dedicated to the preservation of the Barringer Meteorite Crater and to furthering the understanding of the science of meteoritics. a Three different dating techniques, taking advantage of the natural decay of naturally radioactive elements, have been used to determine the age of the impact crater. The North American Ice Age would not end for another 30,000 years! Investigations around this rim confirmed an “overturned rim sequence”. Il est aussi appelé cratère Barringer, en souvenir de l'ingénieur des mines Daniel Moreau Barringer qui acheta le site en 1903. The fact that the different types of rocks in the rim and on the surrounding plain appeared to have been deposited in the opposite order from their order in the underlying rock beds. Note: This image was scanned from physical media. It was only in 1903 that mining engineer and businessman Daniel Barringer hypothesized it had a meteoritic origin. The origin of this crater has been a source of controversy for many years. The rim of the 1.19 kilometre diameter Barringer Crater is still well defined, even after approximately 49 thousand years of erosion. This shape is determined by the faults in the geology of country rock at the impact site. We did a complete orbit of the crater in order to document it from each direction. Meteorites from this fall are named “Canyon Diablo” after the canyon near where the first identified meteorite from this impact event was found. The pattern of the ejecta blanket, although it has been modified by 49K years of erosion, implies an impact from the south west. Specific Features: The Barringer Crater, approximately 150 km south east of the Grand Canyon, is classified as a simple meteorite crater (Kring 2007). In one weakly shocked rock, it was possible to map the general direction of shock passage by recording the apparent direction of collision of individual grains. The Diameter of the crater is 4,100 feet (1.2 km and it … Today, the crater consists of a bowl-shaped depression 1200 meters in diameter and 180 meters deep, which classifies it as a simple crater -- Barringer Crater is very different from the Haughton and Ries impact structures, which are both complex craters. In all rocks shocked to higher pressure than was necessary to close the voids, high-pressure and/or high-temperature phases are present. Barringer is a lunar impact crater that is located on the southern hemisphere on the Far side of the Moon, named after geologist Daniel Barringer.It is attached to the north-northeastern rim of the walled basin named Apollo, and lies to the southeast of Plummer.South of Barringer, on the floor of the Apollo basin, is the crater Scobee. is known as Canyon Diablo. (GEOLOGY PAGE). Germany’s Ries Crater (or Nördlinger Ries) is not easily discerned in space-based images. Over seventy drill holes have been completed in the rim of the crater as part of a continuing research program of impact craters by the U.S. geological Survey. Le cratère de Barringer ou Meteor Crater est un cratère d’impact situé en Arizona, à l’ouest des Etats-Unis. Image Size: 16.9 km x 12.5 km Meteor Crater, also called Barringer Meteorite Crater, Coon Butte, Arizona Meteor Crater, or Canyon Diablo, rimmed, bowl-shaped pit produced by a large meteorite in the rolling plain of the Canyon Diablo region, 19 miles (30 km) west of Winslow, Arizona, U.S. Before the Barringer Crater was identified as an impact crater it was called Coon Mountain or Coon Butte. understanding of impact processes on the Earth, the moon and elsewhere Locally high pressures enduring for microseconds and high temperatures enduring for milliseconds controlled the phases of SiO2 that formed in the rock. The crater’s existence was probably just as subtle to the medieval Europeans who established a settlement inside it and unknowingly matched their 1-kilometer- (0.6-mile-) wide city to the likely diameter of the meteorite that formed the crater. Brent Dalrymple,Radiometric Dating Does Work!Reports of the National Center for Science Education, Brent Dalrymple, Radiometric Dating Does Work! Le nom fut officiellement adopté par l'Union astronomique internationale (UAI) en 1970 , en référence à Daniel Barringer (1860-1929) . Note that the country rock at this point was uplifted approximately 45 metres from its original position over the surrounding plain. It was then called Meteor Crater after the nearest (now defunct) post office, “Meteor”. T. A. Gaither, and J. J. Hagerty. Also, the roughened surface here catches From siderophile elements detected in a meteorite fragment – siderophile elements (PGE, Ni, Au), it was determined the impactor was a IA iron (Tangle, Hecht 2006). On our planet, erosion will quickly remove an ejecta blanket and destroy any surviving meteorite fragments with the result that crater ejecta remains in only the youngest and best-preserved impact crater. On the rim of the crater I noted fracturing of this country rock by the impact shock wave. In 1960, Eugene Shoemaker, Edward Chao and David Milton were responsible for the discovery of a new mineral at the Barringer crater. Colors: Bands 1 (blue), 2 (green) + 4 (near infrared), 3 (red) appear through a telescope. Meteor Crater est un cratère d'impact situé environ 60 km à l'est de Flagstaff, en Arizona (ouest des États-Unis). see the Landsat 7 Gateway. Class 5 rocks are composed almost entirely of glass, with vesicles uniformly distributed in the glass. Barringer Meteor Crater and Its Environmental Effects. in blue, green, and red, respectively. This mineral, a form of silica called “coesitea”, had first been created in a laboratory in 1953 by chemist Loring Coes. until you reach the Visitor Center next to the north rim of the crater. ejecta blanket around the crater appears somewhat lighter than the Image courtesy Jet Propulsion Laboratory Planetary Photojournal, Image of the Day Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, v. L, no. Geographic Names Board generally honors names of natural features originating from the nearest post office, the feature obtained the name “Meteor Crater” from the local post office called Meteor. The altitude of the crater rim is over 5500’. Barringer Crater, also known as “Meteor Crater,” is a 1,300-meter (0.8 mile) diameter, 174-meter (570-feet) deep hole in the flat-lying desert sandstones 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) west of Winslow, Arizona. Kaibab 10 million year unconformity (the contact between older rocks and younger sedimentary rocks in which at least some erosion has removed some of the older rocks before deposition of the younger). The lechatelierite matrix, experimentally constrained to form at >2000°C, provided the ultrahigh-temperature environment for zircon dissociation (~1670°C) and neoblast formation. The origin of this classic simple meteorite impact crater was long the subject of controversy. The cores are interpreted to be the products of the inversion of stishovite (or a glass with Si in sixfold coordination) that initially formed in the shock front in regions of grains shocked to pressures near 300 kb. There are many craters documented on this site. An excellent documentation of an exploration trip to the bottom of the Barringer Crater can be viewed at: www.meteorite.com, Transformations to granular zircon revealed: Twinning, reidite, and ZrO2 in shocked zircon from Meteor Crater (Arizona, USA), Aaron J. Cavosie, Nicholas E. Timms, Timmons M. Erickson, Justin J. Hagerty and Friedrich Hörz. 1789, pp. The crater is owned by the Barringer family privately through its Barringer Crater Company, which claims to be the “best preserved meteorite crater on Earth.” The crater is not protected as a national monument, given its significance as a geological site, a designation that would entail federal ownership. A suite of shocked Coconino specimens collected at the crater is divided into five classes, arranged in order of decreasing quartz content. The image of the crater wall illustrates, from bottom to top ; Shock metamorphism of the Coconino Sandstone at Meteor Crater, Arizona By this time, Barringer was estimating the size of the meteorite at above a million tons. In class 4 rocks vesicular glass occurs in core regions surrounded by opaque regions containing coesite. Carefully mapping the sequence of layers of the underlying rock, and the layers of the ejecta blanket, where those rocks were deposited in reverse order, he demonstrated that the nuclear craters and the Barringer crater were structurally similar in nearly all respects. The fracture patterns in the individual quartz grains are controlled by the details of the initial morphology of the colliding grains. Stishovite is preserved only in the opaque regions, which are believed to have been cooler than the cores. It is only about 50,000 years old, and is extraordinarily well preserved. Barringer Crater • This crater is located in Arizona, USA • It was created 50,000 years ago by a chunk of METAL from space • It measures about 1.2 km in diameter Size of crater compared to a stadium Standard Iron Company begins their exploration with a hand dug shaft sunk into the crater center in April of 1904. It is about 3,900 ft (1,200 m) in diameter, some 560 ft (170 m) deep, and is surrounded by a rim that rises 148 ft (45 m) above the surrounding plains. The center of the crater is filled with 690–790 ft (210–240 m) of rubble lying above crater bedrock. highway crosses and nearly parallels the northern edge of the scene. It is supposed to be between 20,000 to 50,000 years old. Its formation requires extremely high pressures and temperatures, greater than any occurring naturally on earth. The pilot and passenger survived albeit in a slightly “bent up” condition. U.S. National Natural Landmark. The Barringer Crater is a huge meteorite crater located in Arizona, United States of America. Beyond the rim are low mounds of material thrown out by the impact. Barringer Crater is a National Natural Landmark. The crater is referred to by scientists as Barringer Crater in honor of Daniel Barringer, who first claimed that it was created by meteorite impact. The five classes of rocks have distinct petrographic properties, correlated with the presence of regions containing coesite, stishovite, or fused silica. Il avait antérieurement été nommé cratère Canyon Diablo, nom qui est resté celui de la météorite à l'origine du cratère. The impact crater is privately owned by the Barringer family, through the Barringer Crater Company. Located in Arizona, it has a diameter of 1200 meters and is 170 meters deep. Coconino – 265 my – sandstone fossil sand dunes – Permian. Other domains have {001} in alignment with {110} of neighboring domains, consistent with the former presence of the high-pressure ZrSiO4 polymorph reidite. It drains northward toward the Little At some later date, the planetesimals were disrupted, producing iron metal-dominated asteroids, one of which eventually collided with Earth to produce Barringer Meteorite Crater. The pilot flew into the crater but with the tight turning radius required to stay away from the crater wall, he could not climb to exit the crater. U.S. Geological Survey, Astrogeology Science Center. 937-942. south along Meteor Crater Rd. By this time Barringer’s estimate of its size had risen to ten million tons, and he was envisioning a profit of $250,000,000 on a $500,000 investment. ABSTRACT The D. Barringer assembled evidence to support an impact origin for the Barringer Crater. southeast (lower right). Land, Image of the Day It was in 1920 that the structure was finally recognized to be an impact crater, the first feature on Earth to be so recognized. TAGLE, R. and HECHT, L., Geochemical identification of projectiles in impact rocks. Sutton (1985) used thermoluminescence techniques to determine an age of 49000 +/- 3000 years; Phillips et al (1991) used cosmogenic 36-chlorine techniques to determine an age of 49700 +/- 850 years, and; Nishiizumi et al. The amounts of coesite, stishovite (measured by quantitative X-ray diffraction), and glass vary systematically with decreasing quartz content. Three different estimates are presented, but the pi-scaling method is currently considered the best! NASA Goddard Space Barringer, who first postulated that the feature was the result of a meteorite impact, had established this post office at the Sunshine flag stop on the nearby railroad. It is interesting to note that Stishovite is scientifically classified as an oxide and not as a silicate, even though it is polymorphous with Quartz. on December 14, 1982. The resulting massive explosion excavated 175 million tons of rock, forming a crater nearly a mile wide and 570 feet deep. These vesicles were probably formed by exsolution of water that had been dissolved in melted SiO2 during passage of the shock. One of the striking features of the crater is that its cross section clearly matches the geology of walls of the nearby Grand Canyon. This is a program to estimate the size of a projectile that made a gravity-dominated crater of the given size. The crater is 4,000 feet (1.22 kilometers) in diameter. Today the crater is about 1,200 meters in diameter, some 170 meters deep and is surrounded by a rim that rises 45 meter above the surrounding plains. Mistastin is a lake near Labrador in Canada. This ASTER Infra Red image documents the pattern of the ejecta blanket around the relatively young Barringer Crater. From I-40 Exit 233, head 5.8 mi. Barringer Crater located in the United States, Arizona, is one of the preserved evidences of a collision with a celestial body. Moenkopi –  240 my – reddish brown  silt-stone coastal floodplain cap (over the unconformity). Daniel Moreau Barringer, the company's founder, was the first to identify the Crater, located near Flagstaff, Arizona, as a meteorite impact site. For information about the Landsat series of satellites, In the lowest stages of shock metamorphism (class 1), the quartz grains are fractured, and the voids in the rock are filled with myriads of small chips derived from neighboring grains. It has been estimated that the first two stages of the cratering process (time from initial contact of the impactor until the end of the excavation stage) here at Barringer took approximately 6 seconds! Additionally, nearly all zircon preserve ZrO2 + SiO2, providing evidence of partial dissociation. Located 43 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona, the Barringer Crater is about 1,200 m (4,000 ft) in diameter, 170 m (540 ft) deep, and has a rim that rises 45 m (150 ft) from the surrounding desert terrain. University of California Press, Berkeley, v. 3, pp. The genesis of CS granular zircon started with detrital zircon that experienced shock twinning and reidite formation at pressures from 20 to 30 GPa, ultimately yielding a phase that retained crystallographic memory; this phase subsequently recrystallized to systematically oriented zircon neoblasts, and in some areas partially dissociated to ZrO2. Finally, in 1963, Eugene Shoemaker published his landmark paper analyzing the similarities between the Barringer crater and craters created by nuclear test explosions in Nevada. The 50 meter diameter 300,000 ton impacting meteorite impacted at approximately 15 km/sec and vaporized on impact. Meteor Crater is located at an elevation above sea level of 1,719 m. It is approximately 1,200 m in diameter, approximately 170 m deep, and is surrounded by a 45 m rim above the surrounding plains. Although the crater is 1.19 km wide, it is very conspicuous because its bright rim contrasts with the darker plain of sedimentary rocks. Meteor Crater lies at an elevation of about 1,740 m (5,709 ft) above sea level. A study of the shocked Coconino sandstone from Meteor Crater, Arizona, was undertaken to examine the role of porosity in the compression of rocks and in the formation of highpressure phases. Coesite may comprise 1/3 by weight of some rocks, whereas the stishovite content does not exceed 1%. It is about 1.2 km in diameter, and is about 170 meters deep. sandstones 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) west of Winslow, Arizona. The Meteor Crater: Barringer Crater. The random mixture of meteoritic material and ejected rocks. He then presented the following arguments for the impact origin of the crater to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia in 1906, and again in 1909: NEW CONTRAINTS ON IMPACT PROCESSES AT METEOR CRATER: EJECTA EMPLACEMENT AND FORMATION OF IMPACT MELTS AND METALLIC SPHERULES. Merrill analyzed a new type of rock discovered by Barringer at the crater, which Barringer called “Variety B”.