Located beneath the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay running from underneath the tip of the Delmarva Peninsula (near present-day Cape Charles, Virginia), across the Bay to Norfolk, Virginia, the roughly circular crater is twice the size of Rhode Island (2,500 sq mi [6,400 sq km]) and nearly as deep as the Grand Canyon (0.8 mi [1.3 km] deep). a (UTh)/He age of 33.990.71Ma (2 uncertainties n=2; mean square weighted deviation=2.6; probability [P]=11%), which is interpreted to be the (UTh)/He age of formation of the Chesapeake Bay impact structure. The core of the crater is 24 miles across, with a circular crater of about 53 miles. 3). Griscom D. L., Akiyoshi A., Homae T., Kondo K., Yamanaka C., Ueno T., Ikeya M., Affatigato M., Schue A. For Sale: 5 beds, 3.5 baths 2256 sq. Geology, Volume 33, pp. Impacts this size are so rare that the timing was almost certainly no coincidence; perhaps a pair of gravitationally bound asteroids happened to cross Earths path. Considered to be one of the best-preserved "wet-target" impact craters in the world, the Chesapeake Bay Crater is the largest known impact site in the United States. 8, pp. The target region was on the marine continental shelf at the time of impact, and most of the region is still or again underwater today. Horton, J. W., Jr., G. S. Gohn, J. C. Jackson, J. N. Aleinikoff, W. E. Sanford, L. E. Edwards, and D. S. Powars. 469-479. Geology, Volume 31, No. 1 Metastable preservation of coesite and stishovite requires rapid cooling prior to amorphization. The compaction differences produced a subsidence differential, causing the land surface over the breccia to remain lower than the land surface over sediments outside the crater. The supporting pebbly matrix contains variably mixed assemblages of microfossils along with trace quantities of impact ejecta. 819-833.doi:10.1111/j.1945-5100.2006.tb00488.x, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1945-5100.2006.tb00488.x/abstract, McFarland, E. R., and T. S. Bruce. The edge of the inner crater is at ~17 km radius and slopes. In the far northern reaches of the Siberian tundra is an enigmatic place called Popigai. Theimpact originof eachlocation listed on this website has been supported by unambiguous diagnostic evidence of hypervelocity impact that has beenreported in a scientific (usually peer reviewed)context. The gravelly sands are poorly sorted, clast supported, and generally massive, but crude size-sorting and subtle, discontinuous layers occur locally. 697-700.. Boulder, Colorado: Geological Society of America. 925-928, doi:10.1130/G21854.1, http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/33/12/925.abstract. Insight from numerical modeling. The entire bolide event, from initial impact to the termination of breccia deposition, lasted only a few hours or days. GPX; KML; LOC; UTM (WGS84 Datum) 18S E 409271 N 4124971: Decimal Degrees: 37.26690000, -76.02326667: Degrees and Decimal Minutes: These faults are another result of the subsidence of the breccia. It is one of the best-preserved "wet-target" or marine impact craters, and the largest known impact crater in the U . An asteroid or meteor collided with Earth in what is today the southern portion of the Chesapeake Bay. Edwards L. E., J. W. Horton, Jr., and G. S. Gohn. Confirmation of a meteoritic component in impact-melt rocks of the Chesapeake Bay impact structure, Virginia, USA Evidence from osmium isotopic and PGE systematics The location of the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater (CBIC) correlates with what is known as the Virginia inland saltwater wedge (Powars & Bruce 1999). The record of ground zero in the Chesapeake Bay impact crater-Suevites and related rocks, Special Paper of the Geological Society of America, Issue 458, pp. Below are multimedia items associated with this project. http://specialpapers.gsapubs.org/content/458, EARTH IMPACT DATABASE: CHESAPEAKE BAY CRATER, WIKIPEDIA ENTRY FOR CHESAPEAKE BAY IMPACT CRATER. GSA Special Paper 458. A major project by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program and U.S. Geological Survey explored the site between 2003 and 2006. The structure displays several characteristics typical of terrestrial impact craters (flat floor; upraised faulted rim; brecciated sedimentary fill), but several other characteristics are atypical (an unusually thin ejecta blanket; lack of an inner basin, peak ring, or central peak; being nearly completely filled with breccia). 147-170. The Chesapeake Bay impact structure is one of the largest and most well preserved impact structures on Earth. The entire circular crater is about 53mi (85km) in diameter and 0.81mi (1.3km) deep, an area twice the size of Rhode Island, and nearly as deep as the Grand Canyon. In 1993, data from oil exploration revealed the extent of the crater. Abstract , https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/2005/1688/ak/PP1688_chapE.pdf, Horton J. W. Jr., Kunk M. J., Belkin H. E., Aleinikoff J. N., Jackson J. . The Chesapeake Bay impact structure is a ca. It is now completely covered by younger sediments, but was discovered in the early 1990s by marine geophysical surveys and subsequent drilling. Chesapeake Bay Crater Offers Clues to Ancient Cataclysm Chesapeake Bay impact crater - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 35,000,000 years ago, near the Eastern Shore, a comet struck and produced utter devastation. Official websites use .gov Because the PGE abundances in the impact-melt rocks are dominated by the target materials, interelemental ratios of the impact-melt rocks are highly variable and nonchondritic. This section, which is includedfor eachcrater on this website,is not an exhaustive list of such published evidence, but is meant to demonstrate that appropriate work has been done for each listing. Another consequence of the impact is that all ground-water aquifers were truncated and excavated by the impact. 119136., Emry, S. R., and B. Miller. The Barringer Crater is a 1.2 kilometer simple, bowl shaped crater formed about 50,000 years ago by an iron impactor about 30 meters across. http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/33/5/417.short, Shah A. K., Daniels D. L., Kontny A., and Brozena J. Below are publications associated with this project. The impact crater created a long-lasting topographic depression which helped predetermine the course of local rivers and the eventual location of the Chesapeake Bay. Marine deposition resumed immediatelyafter the impact, leading to rapid burial of the impact formations and thus,good preservation. A brief introduction to the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater. At the calculated proportions of a meteoritic component (0.01-0.1% by mass), no mixtures of the investigated target rocks and sediments can reproduce the observed PGE abundances of the impact-melt rocks, suggesting that other PGE enrichment processes operated along with the meteoritic contamination. 995-998. doi: 10.1130/0091-7613(2002)030<0995:SPTICB>2.0.CO;2, http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/30/11/995.abstract, Poag C. W. (1997) The Chesapeake Bay bolide impact: a convulsive event in Atlantic Coastal Plain evolution, Sedimentary Geology, Volume 108, Issues 1-4, pp. </p><p>Lester, W. R., (2006), Structure of the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater from Wide . It is one of the best preserved craters in the world and the largest to be found in America. These faults are zones of crustal weakness and have the potential for continued slow movement, or sudden larger offsets if reactivated by earthquakes. The two youngest zircon grains yield an inversevariance weighted mean (UTh)/He age of 33.990.71Ma (2 uncertainties n=2; mean square weighted deviation=2.6; probability [P]=11%), which is interpreted to be the (UTh)/He age of formation of the Chesapeake Bay impact structure. . One of the largest impact craters on the planet is located not too far from Washington D.C. In this huge new reservoir, pore spaces are filled with briny water that is 1.5 times saltier than normal seawater. The occurrence of coesite in suevites from the Chesapeake Bay impact structure is confirmed within a variety of textural domains insitu by Raman spectroscopy for the first time and in mechanically separated grains by X-ray diffraction. 2005, pp. The crater was then buried by additional sedimentary beds that have accumulated during the 35 million years following the impact. (1993) The Chesapeake Bay impact crater; Stratigraphic and seismic evidence (abstract). Powars D. S., Poag C. W., Mixon R. B. It is one of the best preserved marine impact craters, and the largest known impact crater in the U.S. Raman spectroscopy also showed a series of unidentified peaks associated with shocked quartz grains that likely represent unidentified silica phases, possibly including a moganite-like phase that has not previously been associated with coesite. The Chesapeake Bay impact crater[1]was formed by a bolidethat impactedthe eastern shore of North Americaabout 35.5 0.3 million years ago, in the late Eoceneepoch. Location big map. Some scientists have speculated that the low ground caused by the meteor influenced the course of the rivers and caused their convergence upon that one specific area. The target region was on the marine continental shelf at the time of impact, and most of the region is still or again underwater today. pp. This report documents the highly variable structure, stratigraphy, and buried topography of the outer rim of the Chesapeake Bay impact crater created by its impact and burial. Location: Quebec, Canada. Quartz and K-feldspar are the main sand-size minerals and smectite and kaolinite are the principal clay minerals. That's enough breccia to cover all of Virginia and Maryland with a layer 30 m thick. Listing by Realty Connect USA L I Inc. larger lot. 3, pp. Algae, crustaceans, and mollusks were going extinct in large numbers, while primitive whales were replaced by modern groups. Most of the so-called correlations between impacts and extinctions have been pretty frayed. For example, we need to know how deeply buried the breccia is in order to avoid drilling into it inadvertently and contaminating the overlying freshwater aquifers. The goal was to reach the crater floor, mainly in order to study shock barometry, hydrothermal effects below the crater, andpossible breccia injections/in situ brecciation. Lithologies of cores are correlated with borehole geophysical logs to characterize the physical properties of the stratigraphic units and their geophysical signatures. This age is in agreement with K/Ar, 40Ar/39Ar, and fission track dates for tektites from the North American strewn field, which have been interpreted as associated with the Chesapeake Bay impact event. The cause of these diversions is the differential subsidence of the outlaying country rock compared to the breccia within the Chesapeake Bay impact crater forcing a structural sag over the subsiding breccia. They could allow the salty water to flow upward and contaminate the freshwater supply. (2006) Confirmation of a meteoritic component in impact-melt rocks of the Chesapeake Bay impact structure, Virginia, USA - Evidence from osmium isotopic and PGE systematics, Meteoritics and Planetary Science, Volume 41, issue 6, pp. CHESAPEAKE BAY IMPACT CRATER The 56-mi-wide CBIC is located beneath the lower Chesapeake Bay, its surrounding peninsulas, and the continental shelf east of the Virginia part of the Delmarva Peninsula (figs. However, numerical modeling techniques by Collins et al. Most of the rivers, like the Rappahannock, flow southeastward to the Atlantic. The river diversions are at the rim of this sag. The bolide made impact at a speed of approximately 17.8 kilometers (11.1 miles) per second,[4] punching a deep hole through the sediments and into the granite continental basement rock. In Studies of the Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure - The USGS-NASA Langley Corehole, Hampton, Virginia, and Related Coreholes and Geophysical Surveys: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1688. hdl.handle . Powars, D.S., and Bruce, T.S., 1999, The effects of the Chesapeake Bay impact crater on the geological framework and correlation of hydrogeologic units of the Lower York-James Peninsula, Virginia: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1612, 82 p. Prepared in cooperation with the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission. Meteoritics and Planetary Science, Volume 41, Issue 5, pp. Please search for specific craters. . Its location on a passive continental margin has preventedpost-impact tectonic disturbance. [3] Continued slumping of sediments over the rubble of the crater has helped shape the Chesapeake Bay . 1 . Secure .gov websites use HTTPS 317348., http://specialpapers.gsapubs.org/content/458, Collins G. S., Wnnemann K. (2005) How big was the Chesapeake Bay impact? Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. With sea level this low, the major east coast rivers had to cut narrow valleys across the region all the way to the shelf edge. The upper part of the within-crater breccia lens hasbeen extensively reworked by immediately post-impact environmentalforces, including high-energy currents and possibly tsunami. In The ICDP-USGS Deep Drilling Project in the Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure: Results from the Eyreville core holes, edited by Gohn G. S., Koeberl C., Miller K. G., and Reimold W. U. GSA Special Paper 458. The mineralogy and geochemistry of the gravelly sands are typical for a passive continental margin source. Poag C. W. (1996) Structural outer rim of Chesapeake Bay impact crater - Seismic and borehole evidence. They walked right through it.According to Prothero, these extinctions were most likely caused by long-term global cooling and changes in the ocean circulation brought about by continental drift. It provides an accessible analog for studying impact processes in layered and wet targets on volatile-rich planets. [C Wylie Poag; Christian Koeberl; Wolf Uwe Reimold] -- This volume synthesizes 16 years of geological and geophysical studies that document an 85-km-wide impact crater buried 500 m beneath Chesapeake Bay in southeastern Virginia, USA. The high cliffs along the rivers there are made of rock that shows signs of once having been completely melted, and satellite images reveal that the tundra actually forms a giant ring-shaped depression 60 miles acrosswhich suggests that Popigai is a vast meteorite crater. If your research leads you to additional scientific references related to this crater, please help improve this resource by sending a note with the new citation(s) to: robert@impactcraters.us ), Bartosova K., Ferriere L., Koeberl C., Reimold W. U., and Gier S. (2009) Petrographic and shock metamorphic studies of the impact breccia section (13971551 m depth) of the Eyreville drill core, Chesapeake Bay impact structure, USA. Even with erosion, it's considered one of the largest and best-preserved craters on Earth, with an estimated diameter of 62 miles (100 kilometers). Reston, Virginia: U.S. Geological Survey, open-file report 2004-1016. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2004/1016/2004-1016.pdf, Edwards L. E., Powars D. S. (2003) Impact Damage to Dinocysts from the Late Eocene Chesapeake Bay Event. The middle gravelly sand (below the amphibolite block) is finer-grained, contains more abundant clay minerals, and displays more variable chemical compositions than upper gravelly sand (above the block). 1 ) . 819-833. 349376., Wittmann A., Schmitt R. T., Hecht L., Kring D. A., Reimold W. U., Povenmire H. (2009) Petrology of impact melt rocks from the Chesapeake Bay crater, USA. Boulder, Colorado: Geological Society of America. The global distribution of ejecta material in the U pper Eocene (according to Simonson and Glass 2004) and the locations of the Popigai and Chesapeake Bay impact craters. http://www.solid-earth-discuss.net/4/363/2012/sed-4-363-2012.pdf. Despite the fact that the structure is deeply buried, it is one of the better studied impact craters in the United States, through drilling and geophysical survey. : Horton and Izett, 2005; Pusz et al., 2009). Based on the new isotope data, we exclude any relation between the NA tektites and the Popigai impact crater, although they have identical ages within 2s errors. Author: Levine, Arlene S. Published: March 10, 2008. Effects of the Bolide Impact Discovery of the giant crater has completely revised our understanding of Atlantic Coastal Plain evolution. (2009) Pre-impact tectonothermal evolution of the crystalline basement-derived rocks in the ICDP-USGS Eyreville B core, Chesapeake Bay impact structure. 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