A fourth impact crater-tectite pairing discovered

A new field of tektites

Tektites are naturally occurring glasses, produced by the melting of the Earth's surface under the impact of an asteroid over one kilometer in diameter, and ejected over a long distance (between 200 and 12,000 km). To date, four tectite fields are known (in North America, Australasia, Côte d'Ivoire and Central Europe), only three of which are linked to a source crater. The most recent discoveries date back to the 1930s, and the first was described by Darwin.

Extraterrestrial chromium to understand the formation of tektites

The work published by the consortium led by Pierre Rochette at CEREGE demonstrates that the glasses found in Belize were produced by an impact and have the same age (805,000 years) and the same geochemical signature as glasses recovered from inside a crater 14 km in diameter: the Pantasma crater in Nicaragua. Demonstrating the existence of this crater was the first step in research carried out by the same consortium in 2019. In both cases, traces of extraterrestrial chromium were found, pointing to the same type of asteroid: ordinary chondrite. The study of this new crater-tectite pairing will provide a better understanding of the poorly understood process of tectrite formation.