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Melted Chaos in Sudbury Impact Crater

Mesmerizing melted rock within a 9 x 6 inch sliced and polished sample of the Sudbury Impactite.

 

One of the world's largest craters was created by a 10 km-wide asteroid smashing at uber-velocity into proto-North America 1.85 billion years ago. The impact structure has since been pinched north-south and elongated east-west to 190 km length by plate tectonics.

 

Sudbury geology maps that show the concentric rock formations outlining this now-elliptical ancient crater:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Basin#Formation

and

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Basin

 

Display piece of Grey Onaping Fallback Breccia is from road cut on Highway 144 near Dowling, Sudbury District, Ontario and acquired by yours truly at a high-quality geostore in Westport Ontario. The owner of Rox Rock Shop who collected, cut and polished this wow-grade material has a fair bit of neat local offerings among much global goodies.

 

Further linkage to the power and extent of the Sudbury impactor as seen in impact debris 400 miles away in Thunder Bay.

flic.kr/p/deHLxy

 

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Uploaded on January 13, 2016
Taken on January 11, 2016