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Planetary Society Expedition to Belize Goes On Line
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- Subject: Planetary Society Expedition to Belize Goes On Line
- From: Ron Baalke <BAALKE@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov>
- Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 20:18:37 GMT
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Planetary Society Expedition to Belize Goes On Line
Society Web Site Offers Daily Reports on Latest
Expedition Investigating the Demise of the
Dinosaurs
From now until February 1, 1998, The Planetary
Society's third expedition to Belize is searching
for evidence of the asteroid impact that ended the
age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. This
time everyone is invited to participate via this
web site,
http://www.planetary.org/hot-topics/belize/
where field reports -- including images
-- from the expedition will be posted on a daily
basis.
Team leaders Adriana Ocampo of the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory and Kevin Pope of Geo Eco Research are
again leading a group of Planetary Society
volunteers on a geological adventure into the
jungles of Belize. Past Society expeditions to the
region collected samples of ejecta blanket
material -- debris blasted from the Chicxulub
crater when the asteroid crashed just off the
coast of the Yucatan. The crater, now buried under
the accumulated sediment of millions of years, is
200 to 300 kilometers across (about 124 to 186
miles across).
Ocampo said, "In this third expedition to Belize,
we will continue our quest to build a more
complete picture of what really happened when a
comet or asteroid collided with Earth and changed
our world forever.
"We have been tantalized by unique evidence from
the impact found only in Belize, and this
expedition will allow us to better understand how
impacts affect Earth and the other planets in our
solar system."
Scientific objectives of the 1998 expedition
include collecting samples; following the ejecta
blanket from north to south Belize to see how far
it extends; and mapping the distribution of
ballistically deformed materials, such as "Pook's
pebbles" -- unique features that were discovered
in Belize on a prior Society expedition.
This expedition will also work on an analog to
Mars by correlating their findings in Belize with
similar features found on the martian surface
during the Pathfinder mission.
A digital camera, donated to the Planetary Society
by Epson, will be used to record images of
scientists and volunteers at work, the sites being
studied, and some of the geological samples
discovered. These images, along with daily field
reports, will be posted on the Society's web site.
Expedition team member Robert Cozzi, well-known
author of six books on computer programming, and
his daughter Theresa will post the reports and
photograph the expedition.
Discoveries from the 1995 and 1996 trips to Belize
include
* The identification of a new species of crab
that went extinct at the end of the
Cretaceous period, named Carcineretes
planetarius in honor of the Planetary
Society;
* Identification of shock quartz in northern
Belize;
* Identification of an iridium anomaly at
Albion in northern Belize; and
* Identification of possible condensate
material from the impact's vapor plume,
including Pook's pebbles.
While this is the Planetary Society's third
expedition to Belize, it is the fourth sent by the
Society to study evidence of the Chicxulub impact.
Another expedition went to Italy in 1996 to study
core samples from that same time period.