[meteorite-list] Meteorites from the bottom of the ocean - Part 2 of 2

[E.P. Grondine]

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 <dgweir at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Here's a photo to go with the story:
> 
> http://meteoritestudies.com/KTFOSSIL.JPG
> 
> David
> 
> bernd.pauli at paulinet.de 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.
> 
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