[meteorite-list] New Mexico Craters

[Dennis Cox]

Hi Abe, and List,

For those interested, the website Abe mentioned is mine. It's at:
http://craterhunter.wordpress.com/

I would be extremely interested in what you find at the crater sties in 
southeast New Mexico, and West Texas. Their numbers may seem to be extreme. 
But only from a 19th century uniformitarian-assumptive viewpoint that 
assumes that catastrophic impact events don't happen anymore. Or that, a 
typical extinction level, catastrophic impact event should consist of a 
single large bolide. And not a large cluster of smaller fragments.

But look up in the sky, and take note of the kinds objects we typically see 
in the Taurid Complex, in short period, Earth-crossing, orbits.

The Deep Impact mission to comet TEMPEL 1 showed the head of that comet to 
have the consistency of a dirty snow bank. It also showed that the object is 
a geologically active body. Comet HOLMES is unstable, and prone to violent 
outbursts.  Images of fragmented comets LINEAR , and Scwassmann-Wachmann 3, 
both daughters of the Taurid Complex, make it abundantly clear that total, 
explosive, fragmentation of a comet from the Taurids can occur spontaneously 
at any time. And it can happen before it even gets close to a planet.

So, in fact, a large cluster of smaller fragments is a far more likely 
catastrophic impact scenario than a single large bolide.

Please read Paleolithic extinctions, and the Taurid Complex, by W. M Napier
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2268163/Paleolithic%20extinctions.pdf

Professor Napier points out that the fragmentation of comets is now 
recognized as a common path to their destruction. He also states that, 
during the breakup of the Taurid progenitor, the Earth intersecting with the 
debris of that giant comet's breakup, and producing a mass extinction level 
catastrophe, is a reasonably probable event. He puts the the estimate at 
something like 1.1 billion tons of cometary debris impacting over the course 
of about an hour.

The inventory of objects in the Taurid complex is data that's as empirical 
as anything you can dig up with a shovel, and a magnet. So, in fact, the 
pristine footprints of a very large, extinction level, super-cluster impact 
event of smaller fragments should be expected to be found somewhere in North 
America.

The fragment sizes would have included stuff all the way down to dust 
grains. So it would be logical to predict that airburst phenomena played a 
very significant role.

See: IMPACT MELT FORMATION BY LOW-ALTITUDE AIRBURST PROCESSES, EVIDENCE FROM 
SMALL TERRESTRIAL CRATERS AND NUMERICAL MODELING. H. E. Newsom1, and M. B. 
E. Boslough
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2268163/IMPACT%20MELT%20FORMATION%20BY%20LOW-ALTITUDE%20AIRBURST%20PROCESSES%2C.pdf

There may be little, or no, shocked grains. But there should still be 
significant ET chemistry in any blast effected materials from the event. 
Would you be willing to send a few small rock specimens to Horton Newsom, at 
UNM's Meteoritics Lab.?

Deepest regards to all,
Dennis Cox