36-45 (November We reached the site using Hummer vehicles in about 17 hours driving time using GPS devices to locate ourselves. The object on the left side of the photo is a magnetometer sensor-head. The Wabar crater of south-central Saudi Arabia is one of the youngest terrestrial impact craters ( i.e., --6400 yr old; Storzer, 1971). We describe field observations made during a visit to the Wabar impact site, provide analytical data on the material collected, and combine these data with poorly known information discovered during the recovery of the largest meteorites. 1998 issue). From these we calculated a minimum original mass of the bolide at about 3,500 tons, with an impact (kinetic) energy of about 10 to 12 kilotons equivalent TNT (this is about 10 to the 21th power ergs, or comparable to the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima in August 1945). The crater complex and its associated ejecta field are largely … Wynn, J.C. and Shoemaker, E. M.,1999, Le Jour, ou le ciel s'enflamma; la recherche des meteorites. by: Jeff Wynn and Gene Shoemaker* (deceased). Generally these are small and usually highly oxidized when buried in the top 40 centimeters of sand; these samples are a type IIIa medium octahedrite. 5, pp. Three craters have been documented, though very little material has been available. Luminescence dating has been used to find the age of meteorite impact craters at Wabar (Al Hadida) in Saudi Arabia. Wabar can be reached by four-wheel-drive vehicles only with great difficulty, usually requiring several arduous days of travel, owing to the lack of any landmarks and the presence of continuous moving sand dunes for the last 250 kilometers of the most direct route there. The Wabar impact craters, Saudi Arabia, revisited. It is believed that these craters are located entirely within the sand sheet since the ejected material consists exclusively of shock-lithified dune sand and lacks limestone blocks. The Wabar impact craters, Saudi Arabia, revisited. This article appeared on pages 26-33 of the November/December 1986 print edition of Saudi Aramco World. year old Wabar meteorit e craters (Saudi Arabia) represents suitable material to study the se processes . 5, pp. Crossref The rest of the sample was primarily copper. The very young Wabar craters formed by impact of an iron meteorite and are known to the scientific community since 1933. Note also that sand shears easily, so a greater percentage of energy is partitioned into heating the target material than usual. Location: Saudi Arabia. We installed survey monuments, including a large PVC mast (see Figure 2) at the apparent downrange (southeast) end of the crater field; its GPS coordinates are 21o 30.153'N by 50o 28.445'E. These new data are used as a basis for re-evaluating the results of earlier studies of the Wabar event. See, T H., Murali, A V. and Blanchard,D P., Heterogeneous dissemination of projectile materials in the impact melts from Wabar crater, Saudi Arabia. The incoming bolide probably arrived at the upper fringes of the Earth's atmosphere with over 100 kilotons (TNT equivalent) of kinetic energy; it appears to have lost most of its energy during a shallowly oblique (probably between 20 and 45 degrees from the horizontal) passage before it hit the desert floor. Sustainable solutions. Nabij de kraters veranderde het zand deels in zwarte slakken, ook wel glas genoemd. All structured data from the file and property namespaces is available under the Creative Commons CC0 License; all unstructured text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. An earlier fission-track date of 6,400 years may be too old. In the mid-1960s, Aramco received reports from Bedouin tribesmen that the sands around the craters had shifted, revealing a camel-hump-sized iron rock, which probably broke off from the main meteorite before impact. 1313-1314. Proceedings Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 19th, pp. The object arrived from roughly the N60W (300o) direction, i.e., the direction of modern Riyadh, capitol of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. einen Meteoriteneinschlag entstandene, an der Erdoberfläche sichtbare Impaktkrater The very young Wabar craters formed by impact of an iron meteorite and are known to the scientific community since 1933. The few weak magnetic anomalies that do exist correlate weakly with the proximal ejecta fields. Our magnetic survey data are remarkable for the relatively low amplitudes (20-50 nT) observed in an area with 3,500 tons of iron dispersed over it. 3, pp. Wabar. The site is difficult to work in; daytime temperatures commonly reach 50 degrees Centigrade (122 degrees Farenheit) or higher. Most of the proximal black glassy slag was derived from "jetting" into the air during the initial contact of the Wabar object, and additional glass was distributed northwestward by prevailing winds by the fireball cloud. Day the Sands Caught Fire: Scientific American 279, no. 51.255.203.190. The Wabar craters are impact craters located in Saudi Arabia first brought to the attention of Western scholars by British Arabist, explorer, writer and Colonial Office intelligence officer St John Philby, who discovered them while searching for the legendary city of Ubar in Arabia's Rub' al Khali in 1932. --J.Wynn. Wynn, J. C., and Shoemaker, E. M., 1998, The The craters are covered over by the ever-shifting sand dunes. (2013). The Wabar impact site is completely engulfed in sand, and there is no evidence of outcrop within at least 5 kilometers. We have completed detailed geologic mapping and geophysical surveys at the Wabar meteorite impact craters complex in the core of the Ar-Rub' Al-Khali (Empty Quarter) region of Saudi Arabia. We describe field observations made during a visit to the Wabar impact site, provide analytical data on the material collected, and combine these data with poorly known information discovered during the recovery of the largest meteorites. SAMPLES AND ANALYTICAL METHODS The coordinates of craters and separately fallen iron meteorite fragments (as reported in Table 1) are based Wabar impact melt rocks are the result of mixing iron meteorite (IIIAB medium octahedrite with on average ~92 wt% Fe, ~7.3 wt% Ni, and ~0.22 wt% Co [3]) with a strongly quartz -dominated dune sand Using a variety of luminescence dating techniques applied to impactite formed by the meteorite, and to the underlying sand, the age is found to be 290 +/- 38 years. The data make clear, however, that there is virtually no iron left within the crater rims themselves - the craters all correlate with magnetic lows. Goro Komatsu, Alessandro Coletta, Maria Libera Battagliere, Maria Virelli, Wabar, Saudi Arabia, Encyclopedic Atlas of Terrestrial Impact Craters, 10.1007/978-3-030-05451-9, (209-210), (2019). From the paper "The Wabar Meteorite Impact Site, Ar-Rub' Al-Khali Desert, Saudi Arabia" by Jeff Wynn and (the great) Gene Shoemaker. These pieces came from a collection that has bee This photo was taken looking southwest from the top of the seif dune shown in the site map above.