[meteorite-list] New or maybe old QUESTION??????

[Norbert Classen]

Hi Pete, and All,

Check out the following website on Fossil Meteorites (best viewed with
Internet Explorer - it doesn't display correctly with Firefox for some
reason):

http://epsc.wustl.edu/~visscher/research/fossil_files/frame.htm

Best,
Norbert 


> --- Pete Shugar <pshugar at clearwire.net> wrote:
>
>   
>> List,
>> Maybe this has been asked and answered (sounds like a lawer thing) 
>> and maybe not.
>> Since I am relatively new to collecting and certainly not an Expert 
>> in any area of meteorite study (with the exception of magnetisum 
>> (from the sky magnetic VS made a magnet by processes here on earth).
>> Here's my question:
>> A geologist  digs in an area that he thinks there will be the 
>> likelyhood of finding a fossil. Maybe he gets lucky and maybe finds 
>> bunches of them.
>> Has anyone ever found a meteorite buried deep in a layer that is 
>> thousands or even millions of years old?
>> Years ago--long before I became an obsessed, crazed, meteorite 
>> addict, while teaching a series on earthquakes, I had found a video 
>> of a scientist standing with one foot on the Pacific plate and the 
>> other foot on the North Americian plate, ie astraddle of the San 
>> Andreas fault line. In back of him was a small vertical clift of 
>> maybe 10 feet and you could plainly see the shift (approx 15 inches) 
>> in the layers of sediment.
>> Now I've got to thinking (some say this is my
>> problem--Thinking) that these
>> meteorites have a tremendous terestial age. If the earth is bombarded 
>> by these meteorites throughout the aeons, then there should be a 
>> record, ie evidence in the form of buried craters (see the Odessa,Tx 
>> crater) -- Approx 100 to 110 feet deep that  has been filled in till 
>> it is only 25 to 30 feet deep now due to wind blown sand (mostly). 
>> I've got a pamplet of  "Occasional Papers of the Strecker Museum" 
>> from Baylor University showing  a neat cross section of the Odessa 
>> Crater.
>> How much investigation into the cross section structure of the 
>> sediment layers, looking for evidence of craters has been done?  Has 
>> there ever been an accidential discovery of a buried crater in a 
>> clift side. Lots of these erroded mesa exist out west. Maybe evidence 
>> is visable there.
>> Surely Valeria is not the only animal killer out there.
>> Maybe another animal drilled by a passing meteorite with the 
>> coresponding meteorite near the body. Maybe there's no body but the 
>> meteorite is still there buried in the deeper layers of sediment. 
>> Maybe tektites are the only surviving evidence.
>> In a nutshell, has there ever been a meteorite found at a depth of 
>> sediment that is plainly very old?
>> Pete