A 650 km2 Miocene strewnfield of splash-form impact glasses in the Atacama Desert, Chile

Glassy ejecta are associated to a limited number of impact craters, and yet hold key information about hypervelocity impact processes. Here we report on the discovery of a ∼650 km2 impact glass strewnfield in the Central Depression of the Atacama Desert. These cm-sized splash-form objects, that we refer to as atacamaites, are essentially composed of a dacitic glass formed by high-temperature melting of local magmatic rocks, with the addition of a variable iron meteorite contamination, 5 wt.% on average. The most likely nature for the impactor is the IIAB iron group. The fission-track plateau method, on two samples, yielded a mean formation age of Ma. No associated impact crater has been discovered so far, suggesting it may be a relatively small, km-sized crater. The glassy nature, aerodynamic shapes, elevated formation temperature, and low water content are reminiscent of tektites. However, their small size, heterogeneity, oxidation state, significant contamination by the impactor, and likely more proximal provenance distinguish them from tektites. Atacamaites have no equivalent among the few known terrestrial ejected impact glasses, and increase the intriguing diversity of such products that we propose to name “tektoids”.

Keyword(s)

impact glasses, Atacama Desert, tektites

Full Text

FilePagesSizeAccess
Publisher's official version
103 Mo
MMC. This supplementary material file contains the result of the electron microprobe analyses for 12 atacamaites (Table S1), and a typical Raman spectrum of SiO2-rich inclusions (Fig. S1).
-76 Ko
Author's final draft
354 Mo
How to cite
Gattacceca J., Devouard B., Barrat Jean-Alix, Rochette P., Balestrieri M.L., Bigazzi G., Ménard G., Moustard F., Dos Santos E., Scorzelli R., Valenzuela M., Gounelle M., Debaille V., Beck P., Bonal L., Reynard B., Warner M. (2021). A 650 km2 Miocene strewnfield of splash-form impact glasses in the Atacama Desert, Chile. Earth And Planetary Science Letters. 569. 117049 (10p.). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2021.117049, https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00701/81327/

Copy this text