The impact left a crater more than 55 miles wide, setting events into to motion that eventually led to the formation of the bay about 3,000 years ago. 2005, pp. The estimated 3km bolide excavated an 85km depression believed to be 1.3km deep. 120., Griscom D. L. (2001) Possible identification of proximal ejecta from the Upper-Eocene Chesapeake Bay crater (abstract), European Science Foundation: Impact Programme, 6thESF-IMPACT Workshop, Granada, Spain, 35., Griscom D. L. (2002) Is Washington DC built on ejecta deposits of the upper-Eocene Chesapeake Bay Crater? An asteroid or meteor collided with Earth in what is today the southern portion of the Chesapeake Bay. 1). It is among the largest and best preserved of the known impact structures on Earth (Poag, et al., 2004; Horton et al., 2005). The Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater : An Educational Investigation for Students into the Planetary Impact Process and its Environmental Consequences. (2009) Megablocks and melt pockets in the Chesapeake Bay impact structure constrained by magnetic field measurements and properties of the Eyreville and Cape Charles cores. The crater was then buried by additional sedimentary beds, which accumulated during the following 35 million years. Location: Quebec, Canada. B., Daniels D. L., and Shah A. K. (2009) Gravity investigations of the Chesapeake Bay impact structureGeological Society of America Special Papers, Volume 458, p. 181-193, doi:10.1130/2009.2458(09), http://specialpapers.gsapubs.org/content/458/181.abstract, Poag C. W. (1996) Structural outer rim of Chesapeake Bay impact crater - Seismic and borehole evidence. Photographed By Bernard Fisher, April 20, 2013. This is an area nearly the size of Rhode Island and nearly as deep as the Grand Canyon. 01, January 1998 ByCarl Zimmer Thursday, January 1, 1998. 195209., Vanko D. A. 697-700.. Listing by Realty Connect USA L I Inc. larger lot. [12] The CBIS consists of a ~35 to 40-km diameter, strongly deformed . 235255. In place of those aquifers is a reservoir of briny water that is 1.5 times saltier than normal seawater. Insight from numerical modeling. 2004), isamong the Earths largest and, at 35 Ma age, one of the best preserved impactstructures known on Earth. Geology, Volume.33, Dec., pp. Effects of the Bolide Impact Discovery of the giant crater has completely revised our understanding of Atlantic Coastal Plain evolution. The Chesapeake Bay Crater : Geology and Geophysics of a Late Eocene Submarine Impact Structure. The Chesapeake Bay impact structure is one of the largest and most well preserved impact structures on Earth. The sign has some missing information so the answers to the earthcache are not revealed. Its impact formed a 25-mile diameter crater that now lies buried beneath the Chesapeake Bay, an estuary in Virginia and Maryland. The sediment layers surrounding the crater, on the other hand, were already partly consolidated, and so the mushy breccia compacted much more rapidly under its subsequent sediment load than the surrounding strata. The core of the crater is 24 miles across, with a circular crater of about 53 miles. 8, pp. 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. "Studies of the Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure - The USGS-NASA Langley Corehole, Hampton, Virginia, and Related Coreholes and Geophysical Surveys." Poag's team observed that the boundary between older surface rocks and younger surface rocks coincides with the position and orientation of the crater rim on all three peninsulas that cross the rim. 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. 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). Most important for present-day inhabitants of the area, the impact disrupted aquifers. United States, Virginia and West Virginia Water Science Center, Powars and Bruce (1999) showed that the Chesapeake Bay region of southeastern Virginia was the site of an asteroid or comet impact during the late Eocene, approximately 35 million years ago (Fig. Powars D. S., Johnson G. H., Bruce T. S. (1998) Stratigraphic, structural, and hydrogeological complexities related to the outer rim of the Chesapeake Bay impact crater (abstract). Known as the Chesapeake Bay Crater, this ancient impact crater wa. GPX; KML; LOC; UTM (WGS84 Datum) 18S E 409271 N 4124971: Decimal Degrees: 37.26690000, -76.02326667: Degrees and Decimal Minutes: Learn more here. In the 1980s, oil rig workers off the Coast of New Jersey found . Horton Jr. J. W., Aleinikoff J. N., Kunk M. J., Naeser C. W., Naeser N. D. (2005) Petrography, structure, age, and thermal history of granitic Coastal Plain basement in the: Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure, USGS-NASA Langley core, Hampton, Virginia, in Studies of the Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure The USGS-NASA Langley Corehole, Hampton, Virginia, and related coreholes and geological surveys, edited by: Horton Jr, J. W., Powars, D. S., and Gohn, G. S., B1B29, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1688. The Chesapeake Bay impact crater was created 35 million years ago when a large asteroid hit the eastern shore of what we call today north America. In fact, when the impacts occurred 35.7 million years ago, nothing happened. 819-833. Stishovite is unstable above about 300-600C, whereas coesite is stable up to about 1100C, suggesting that the quartz grains studied here were quenched at relatively high postshock temperatures exceeding the stability range of stishovite, but within the stability range facilitating preservation of coesite. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Geology, Volume 33, pp. The abrupt diversions of the lower courses of the James and York Rivers (indicated by the small circles in the map above) coincide with the Chesapeake crater rim. The older beds have sagged over the subsiding breccia, and the younger rocks have been deposited in the resulting topographic depression. How is the Chesapeake Bay crater hidden? The supporting pebbly matrix contains variably mixed assemblages of microfossils along with trace quantities of impact ejecta. Federal Government, Coastal and Marine Geology Program > The Chesapeake Bay Bolide Impact: A New View of Coastal Plain Evolution, The Chesapeake Bay Bolide: Modern Consequences of an Ancient Cataclysm, Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem History and Change, The Chesapeake Bay: Geologic Product of Rising Sea Level - USGS Fact Sheet 102-98, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In the far northern reaches of the Siberian tundra is an enigmatic place called Popigai. 1). It is among the largest and best preserved of the known impact structures on Earth (Poag, et al., 2004; Horton et al., 2005). Horton, J. W., Jr., G. S. Gohn, J. C. Jackson, J. N. Aleinikoff, W. E. Sanford, L. E. Edwards, and D. S. Powars. The Chesapeake Bay impact crater was formed by a bolide that impacted the eastern shore of North America about 35.5 0.3 million years ago, . The inner basin includes a central uplift surrounded by a series of concentric valleys and ridges. D.S. The Chesapeake Bay structure, however, is now clearly constrained as the source crater for the North American tektites, although the present data set obviously does not include all target lithologies that have contributed to the composition of the tektites. 218-226. doi:10.1111/j.1945-5100.1996.tb02015.x, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1945-5100.1996.tb02015.x/abstract, Poag C. W. (2002) Synimpact-postimpact transition inside Chesapeake Bay crater. Location Details. 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. Newly analyzed bediasites have the following isotope parameters: +104 to +119 (Srt = 35.7 Ma), 5.7 (Ndt = 35.7 Ma), 0.47 Ga (TSrUR), and 1.15 Ga (TNdCHUR), which is in excellent agreement with previously published data for samples of the NAT strewn field. http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/33/5/417.short, Shah A. K., Daniels D. L., Kontny A., and Brozena J. 726, doi:10.1016/S0022-3093(03)00304-1. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022309303003041, Horton, J. W., Jr., J. N. Aleinikoff, M. J. Kunk, G. S. Gohn, L. E. Edwards, J. M. Self-Trail, D. S. Powars, and G. S. Izett. Touch for directions. Seismic profiles across the crater show many faults that cut the sedimentary beds above the breccia and extend upward toward the bay floor (fig. The Chesapeake Bay impact crater was formed by a bolide that impacted the eastern shore of North America about 35.5 0.3 million years ago, in the late Eocene epoch. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. "Recent Research on the Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure, USA - Impact Debris and Reworked Ejecta." Its impact formed a 25-mile diameter crater that now lies buried beneath the Chesapeake Bay. Poag C. W. (1996) Structural outer rim of Chesapeake Bay impact crater - Seismic and borehole evidence. On the basis of its unusual characteristics and its stratigraphic equivalent to a layer of impact ejecta at Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Site 612. Meteoritics and Planetary Science, Volume 41, Issue 5, pp. . The new dates on the impacts, he argues, call into question the Cretaceous-inspired tendency to link impacts with mass extinctions in general. The slump blocks were then covered with the rubble or breccia. GSA Special Paper 458. In these samples, as much as 70% of the total Os may be of meteoritic origin. A remarkable >60-m-thick, upward-fining, polymictic, marine boulder bed is distributed over >15 000 km2 beneath Chesapeake Bay and the surrounding Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain and inner continental shelf. The Chesapeake Bay watershed drains into five major rivers including the Susquehanna Potomac Rappahannock York and James which provide more than 90 percent of the Bay's fresh water. 1 and 2 A ); the center of the crater is beneath the town of Cape Charles, Va. Continued slumping of sediments over the rubble of the crater has helped shape the Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake Bay impact crater is the largest in the United States, but geologists discovered it only in 1983. (2004) The Chesapeake Bay Crater: Geology and Geophysics of a Late Eocene Submarine Impact Structure, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2004.ISBN-10: 3540404414; ISBN-13: 978-3540404415; doi: 10.1017/S0016756805260430, http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783540404415, Poag C. W., Powars D. S., Mixon R. B. ', USGS, 'The Chesapeake meteorite: message from the past. 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. 11, pp. where: is the gradient operator, is the fluid density [ML-3], q v is the specific discharge [LT-1], Pis the fluid pressure [ML-1T-2], S p is the specific storage in pressure terms 7, p. A-119., Self-Trail J. M. (2003) Shock-Wave-Induced Fracturing of Calcareous Nano Fossils from the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater. There are many craters documented on this site. [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 structure and geometry of the crater were determined by seismic profiling from ships in the bay. It is one of the best-preserved "wet-target" or marine impact craters, and the largest known impact crater in the U . Powars D. S., Bruce T. S., Poag C. W., Mixon R. B. ', 'The Chesapeake Bay bolide: modern consequences of an ancient cataclysm. The size of the crater is constrained in Plescia et al. 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. 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. It is one of the best-preserved "wet-target" impact craters in the world. (2009) A petrographic and fluid inclusion assessment of hydrothermal alteration of some impactites and crystalline rocks in the Chesapeake Bay impact structure, ICDP-USGS Eyreville B coreGeological Society of America Special Papers, Volume 458, p. 543-557, doi:10.1130/2009.2458(23), http://specialpapers.gsapubs.org/content/458/543.abstract, Wittmann A., Reimold W. U., Schmitt R. T., Hecht L., Kenkmann T. (2009) The record of ground zero in the Chesapeake Bay impact crater - Suevites and related rocks. http://specialpapers.gsapubs.org/content/458, EARTH IMPACT DATABASE: CHESAPEAKE BAY CRATER, WIKIPEDIA ENTRY FOR CHESAPEAKE BAY IMPACT CRATER. Specs: This impact crater formed what is now Lake Manicouagan. Quick Description: This impact crater is located in Chesapeake Bay area. The breccia is 1.3 km thick and was deposited as a water-saturated, sandy, rubble-bearing slurry (like concrete before it hardens). . The one at 37 million is way too earlynothing has hit Earth yetand the one at 33 million is 2 million years too late, says Donald Prothero, a paleontologist at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Griscom D. L. (2002) Is Washington DC built on ejecta deposits of the upper-Eocene Chesapeake Bay Crater? This correlation suggests that the presence of the crater may somehow be responsible for the existence of the wedge. Here we report major and trace element data as well as the first Sr-Nd isotope data for drill core and outcrop samples of target lithologies, crater fill breccias, and post-impact sediments of the Chesapeake Bay impact structure. A team of . "ICDP-USGS Workshop on Deep Drilling in the Central Crater of the Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure, Virginia, USA: Proceedings volume." Seismic profiles are like two-dimensional cross sections of the subsurface beds. The sizes of the Popigai crater and the Chesapeake crater are both pretty impressive, says Prothero, but the animals didnt give a damn. Coesite commonly occurs in plastically deformed quartz grains within domains that appear brown (toasted) in transmitted light and rarely within quartz of spheroidal texture. 12631266, doi:10.1126/science.271.5253.1263, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/271/5253/1263, Lee S. R., Horton Jr. J. W., Walker R. J. pp. Possible explanations are 1) participation of unsampled target materials with high PGE abundances in the impact-melt rocks, and 2) variable fractionations of PGE during syn- to post-impact events. , 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. 925-928, doi:10.1130/G21854.1, http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/33/12/925.abstract. Below are publications associated with this project. On land, dense forests gave way to more open habitats, and early hoofed mammals and primates were supplanted by new forms. DISCOVER Vol. Poppe Gohn G. S., Koeberl C., Miller K. G., Riemold W. U., Browning J. V., Cockell C. S., Horton Jr, J. W., Kenkman T., Kulpecz A. Abstract The Chesapeake Bay impact structure, which is about 35 Ma old, has previously been proposed as the possible source crater of the North American tektites (NAT). The Chesapeake Bay Crater impact site was formed more than 35 million years ago by a comet or asteroid 5 to 8 miles (8 to 13 kilometers) in diameter. 689-703. doi: 10.1111/j.1945-5100.2006.tb00985.x, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1945-5100.2006.tb00985.x/abstract. In short, the impact crater created a long-lasting topographic depression, which helped determine the eventual location of Chesapeake Bay. pp. The bolide itself was completely vaporized, with the basement rock being fractured to depths of 5mi (8km), and a peak ring being raised around it. The 187Os/188Os ratios of impact-melt rocks range from 0.151 to 0.518. The 35 Ma old Chesapeake Bay impact structure (CBIS) (Figure 1) is one of the largest impact structures on Earth. Physical Description: 1 electronic document. The clasts change rapidly downcore in composition, size, color, orientation, and age. If you just step back, you can see this bandwagon to blame everything on impacts was premature. [8], Location of impact site in relation to the United States, "Fragments of Late Eocene Earth-impacting asteroids linked to disturbance of asteroid belt", Planetary and Space Science Centre University of New Brunswick Fredericton, "Chesapeake Bay impact structure: Morphology, crater fill, and relevance for impact structures on Mars", 'Isostatic Rebound and its effects on the Chesapeake Bay'. One of the largest impact craters on the planet is located not too far from Washington D.C. Confirmation of a meteoritic component in impact-melt rocks of the Chesapeake Bay impact structure, Virginia, USA Evidence from osmium isotopic and PGE systematics 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. 363-428, doi:10.5194/sed-4-363-2012. are for the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater sign. A., Powars D. S., Sanford W. E., Voytek M. A. https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2002AM/finalprogram/abstract_41490.htm, Deutsch A., Koeberl C. (2006) Establishing the Link Between the Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure and the North American Tektite Strewn Field: The Sr-Nd Isotopic Evidence. Impact crater/structure; Confidence: Confirmed: Diameter: 53 miles (85 km) Depth: 0.81 miles (1.3 km) Impactor . Chesapeake Bay impact crater; Location of impact site in relation to the United States. The entire circular crater is about 53 miles in diameter and almost a mile deep. 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. These are also the coords. The rhenium and platinum-group element (PGE) concentrations of these rocks are 30-270?? The crater is now approximately 200 km southeast of Washington, D.C., and is buried 300-500 meters beneath the southern part of Chesapeake Bay and the peninsulas of southeastern Virginia (fig. 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. A major project by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program and U.S. Geological Survey explored the site between 2003 and 2006. </p><p>Lester, W. R., (2006), Structure of the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater from Wide . For Sale: 5 beds, 3.5 baths 2256 sq. The first hint was a 8-inch-thick (20cm) layer of ejecta found in a drilling core taken off Atlantic City, New Jersey, about 170 miles (274km) to the north. During the warm late Eocene, sea levels were high, and the tidewater region of Virginia lay in the coastal shallows. Boundaries of the Chesapeake Bay impact crater. McDonald I., Bartosova K., Koeberl C. (2009) Search for a meteoritic component in impact breccia from the Eyreville core, Chesapeake Bay impact structure: Considerations from platinum group element contents, Special Paper of the Geological Society of America, Issue 458, pp. This is an area twice the size of Rhode Island, and nearly as deep as the Grand Canyon. http://www.solid-earth-discuss.net/4/363/2012/sed-4-363-2012.pdf. 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). The Chesapeake Bay impact structure is associated with the North American tektite strewn field. The topography also reflects the differential subsidence. The cores sampled a sandy rubble bed, which contains hand-size to person-size chunks (clasts) of clay, limestone, and sand. Inscription. Boulder, Colorado: Geological Society of America. Its presence also limits the availability of freshwater. Neither coincides with the Popigai-Chesapeake impacts. Today, that 25-mile-wide (40 kilometers) crater is buried half a mile below the rocky basement of Chesapeake Bay the 200-mile-long (320 km) estuary linking Virginia and Maryland on the East. Much of the work was summarized in a major volume, Gohn et al. Crawford D. A. Edited by J. W. Horton, Jr., D. S. Powars, and G. S. Gohn. John C. Jackson, J. Wright Horton Jr., I-Ming Chou, Harvey E. Belkin One of the locations of highest relative sea-level rise is at Hampton Roads (the lower part of the James River), located over the crater rim. At this time the sea level was much higher and the coastline was in the vicinity of Richmond, Virginia. Country: United States of America Buy United States of America flags at Flagstore.com! 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. Marker is in this post office area: Cape Charles VA 23310, United States of America. bThe rim of the Chesapeake Crater is a boundary between salty ground water within the craters confines and fresh ground water on the outside. 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. The entire bolide event, from initial impact to the termination of breccia deposition, lasted only a few hours or days. Meteoritics and Planetary Science, Volume 31, Issue 2, pp. Access Online. (2009) Pre-impact tectonothermal evolution of the crystalline basement-derived rocks in the ICDP-USGS Eyreville B core, Chesapeake Bay impact structure. The layer contained the fused glass beads called tektites and shocked quartz grains that are unmistakable signs of a bolide impact. Seismic studies and other geophysical evidence indicated the existence of a possible impact structure centered at Chesapeake Bay (37 degrees x 15' N and 76 degrees x 04' W), which may be 85-90 km in diameter [2]. Another consequence of the impact is that all ground-water aquifers were truncated and excavated by the impact. 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. pp. Results from a Scientific Test Hole in the Central Uplift, Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure, Virginia, USA [Abstract]: Lunar and Planetary Science Conference XXXVI, Abstract 2003, 2005c, p. 2., Horton Jr. J. W., Gohn G. S., Powars D. S., Edwards L. E. (2007) Origin and emplacement of impactites in the Chesapeake Bay impact structure, Virginia, USA, Geological Society of America Special Papers, Volume 437, pp. An official website of the United States government. Even the courses of the modern rivers in the lower bay region point to the continued influence of differential subsidence over the crater. indicate that the post-impact diameter was likely to have been around 25mi (40km), rather than the observed 53mi (85km).[4]. Powars D. S., Poag C. W., Mixon R. B. 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. (2009) Rock magnetic properties of the ICDP-USGS Eyreville core, Chesapeake Bay impact structure, USA. The unconsolidated sediments, Cretaceous to middle Eocene in age, have Srt = 35.7 Ma of +54 to +272, and Ndt = 35.7 Ma ranging from 6.5 to 10.8; one sample from the granitic basement with a TNdCHUR model age of 1.36 Ga yielded an Srt = 35.7 Ma of +188 and an Ndt = 35.7 Ma of 5.7. Catchings, R.D., Saulter, D.E., Powars, D.S., Goldman, M.R., Dingler, J.A., Gohn, G.S., Schindler, J.S., and Johnson, G.H., 2001, High-resolution seismic reflection/refraction images near the outer margin of the Chesapeake Bay impact crater, York-James Peninsula, southeastern Virginia: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 01-407, 18 p. Edwards, L.E., Horton, J.W., Jr., and Gohn, G.S., 2004, ICDP-USGS Workshop on deep drilling in the central crater of the Chesapeake Bay impact structure, Virginia, USA, September 22-24, 2003: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2004-1016, CD. . [3] Continued slumping of sediments over the rubble of the crater has helped shape the Chesapeake Bay . 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. 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. In fact, as late as 18,000 years ago, the bay region was dry land; the last great ice sheet was at its maximum over North America, and sea level was about 200 m lower than at present. and other impact locations have focused on immediate impact-related events, and were limited to hours and or years just after impact . It is one of the best preserved marine impact craters, and the largest known impact crater in the U.S. That's enough breccia to cover all of Virginia and Maryland with a layer 30 m thick. It is the ria, or drowned valley, of the Susquehanna River, meaning that it was the alluvial plain where the river flowed when the sea level was lower. Please search for specific craters. The surrounding region suffered massive devastation. 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. . Chesapeake Bay Crater, Virginia The Chesapeake Bay crater is an 85 km impact structure formed during the late Eocene, about 35.4 million years ago. 1. The entire bolide event, from initial impact to the termination of breccia deposition, lasted only a few hours or days. The rubble bed, which we now realize is an impact breccia, fills the crater and forms a thin halo around it, called an ejecta blanket. USGS, 'Investigating the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater. 1 ) . 1 Metastable preservation of coesite and stishovite requires rapid cooling prior to amorphization. The deep crater, 24mi (38km) across, is surrounded by a flat-floored terrace-like ring trough with an outer edge of collapsed blocks forming ring faults. The edge of the inner crater is at ~17 km radius and slopes. It is now completely covered by younger sediments, but was discovered in the early 1990s by marine geophysical surveys and subsequent drilling. The Toms Canyon structure (~ 2022 km wide) is located on the New Jersey outer continental shelf beneath 80100 m of water, and is buried by ~ 1 km of upper Eocene to Holocene sedimentary strata. (2009) to about 85 km diameter, with a ~40 km diameter central uplift. The Barringer The flooded valleys became the major modern estuaries, like Delaware Bay and Chesapeake Bay. pp. On the Delmarva Peninsula, over the deepest part of the crater, only the aquifers above the breccia are available for freshwater. ==Source== Adapted from North America topography map taken from NASA website. higher than concentrations in basement gneiss, and together with the osmium isotopes indicate a substantial meteoritic component in some impact-melt rocks. Single crystal (UTh)/He dating has been undertaken on 21 detrital zircon grains extracted from a core sample from Ocean Drilling Project (ODP) site 1073, which is located ~390km northeast of the center of the Chesapeake Bay impact structure. However, numerical modeling techniques by Collins et al. (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. GSA Special Paper 458. The late Eocene Chesapeake Bay impact structure (CBIS) is buried at moderate depths beneath continental-margin sediments in southeastern Virginia, USA. 119136., Emry, S. R., and B. Miller. Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater (HM17W7) Location: Yorktown, VA 23690 York County Buy Virginia State flags at Flagstore.com! The presence of this hypersaline aquifer has some practical implications for ground-water management in the lower bay region. Specs: Discovered in the early 1980s, the Chesapeake Bay Crater is located approximately 125 miles (201 . 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. 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