[meteorite-list] NPA 08-14-1950 Pingualuit Crater Found

From: MARK BOSTICK <thebigcollector_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Jan 18 11:15:01 2005
Message-ID: <BAY4-F43E71B3E572CFCC16071DB38F0_at_phx.gbl>

Paper: The Daily Gleaner
City: Kingston, Surrey, Jamaica
Date: Monday, August 14, 1950
Page: 4 (of 16)

Meteorite Crater 2 1/2 Miles Wide

     The northwestern tip of Quebec, just south of Baffin Island, is flat,
sudden tundra sprinkled thickly with little lakes. Most of them are
irregularly shaped. But Prospector Fred W. Chubb noticed, while poring over
an aerial photograph, that one lake was almost round and surrounded by a
wall of rock. Chubb showed the photo to Dr. V. Ben Meen, director of
Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum of Geology and Mineralogy.
     Last week Dr. Meen returned from a quick air visit to the lake and
reported it was almost certainly a meteorite crater. (there was no lava or
other signs of volcanic activity, and the biggest yet discovered. The lake
in the crater (still frozen at the end of July) is 2 1/2 miles across,
compared with Arizona's famed meteorite crater, which is four-fifths of a
mile across. Its level is about 80 feet above that of other small lakes in
the vicinity and around it is a ring of shattered granite that rises 550
feet above the tundra. The rim is lowest in the northwest side, which
suggest that the meteorite came from that direction and hit the ground
obliquely.

3,000 Years Ago

     Dr. Meen found no meteoric iron, only a reddish rock that might prove
to be a peculiar stony material of which some meteorites are made. But there
was plenty of other evidence that some enormous body had buried itself in
the earth: shattered blocks of stone from football to freight-car size, and
concentric circles in the granite around the crater, like ripples stirred up
by a pebble dropped into still water.
     Dr. Meen estimated that the meteorite must have fallen at least 3,000
years ago, since there are no Indian or Eskimo legends about it. He named it
Chubb Crater after the sharp-eyed prospector, and promised that a full-dress
expedition would report on it within a year.

- Time Magazine

(end)

Thanks Charles for pointing out the name change of that crater. Strange
that they chose to re-name a structure, already in many scientific papers,
and more so that they chose a name most of us will have to guess at
pronouncing.

Those that didn't look over Charles' website should really do so. Great
photography Charles!

http://www.ottawa.rasc.ca/astronomy/earth_craters/index.html


Clear Skies,
Mark Bostick
www.meteoritearticles.com
Received on Tue 18 Jan 2005 11:13:37 AM PST