Interesting that there is no impact crater at its discovery site. The lack of an impact crater at the discovery site was only explained after the 1920's, with the new understanding about the Missoula Floods, one of the largest floods documented, caused by the collapse of an ice barrier during the last deglaciation. The meteorite presumably landed on an ice cap in what is now Montana or western Canada, and was transported as a glacial erratic(dragged by the glacier ice) to the vicinity of an ice barrier that formed across the Clark Fork River. This barrier had ponded a huge amount of water at the Lake Missoula right at the time when the meteorite reached the area and the ice barrier became unstable and breached. The resulting flood involved up to 10 million cubic meters per second of water discharge, with large blocks of ice rafting down the Columbia River and the Willamette Valley at the end of the last Ice Age (~13,000 years ago).[6] Some of these ice rafts included boulders (named erratics by geologists) like the Willamette meteorite, which eventually sunk in the flood waters and settled where they were found by humans.
I'm really uncomfortable with your allegation that global warming began 13,000 years ago at the end of the ice age.
ReplyDeleteBut it is a really cool space rock.
well it is science and not politics that shows us the probability that global warming began 13K years ago. it does run in cycles like that. nothing to be uncomfortable with there.
Deleteconsider that it lost half of it's mass and had a drastic increase in aero drag from the surface pitting, it probably hit the five mile thick glacier cap and never touched the soil. interesting proposition. happily, we were not there for that.
A lot less damage resulted from smacking into ice than from hitting water or land. Interesting, I'd never considered that before.
DeleteHere’s a really cool example of glacial erratic.
ReplyDeleteI haven’t seen it yet but it’s in my list:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/madison-boulder
getting up into the front range of the Colorado Rockies on the eastern slope glacier carved valley's we find many very large erratics. in southwest central mountains near southpark one finds many excellent definition glacial moraines while traveling north or south thru the valley. a real geologic education. looking out past the herds of elk browsing thru the grasses one sees many smaller erratics which have been pushed from the high peaks. really beautiful any time of year.
ReplyDelete