[meteorite-list] Prospector Says Circular Structures in Colorado are Impact Craters

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 15:27:54 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <200612292327.PAA03220_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.gunnisontimes.com/index.php?content=C_news&newsid=4967

Prospector says Hartman Rocks, meteor strike
Ian Neligh
Gunnison Country Times (Colorado)
December 29, 2006

If Johnny Tonko is right, then nearly 364 million years ago - just as
the first fish started evolving legs - a meteorite crashed into the
earth with the force of many hydrogen bombs forming a crater 5 miles
across; Gunnison's own Hartman Rocks.

This meteorite, according to Tonko, may have also been one in a series
of meteorites that strafed across North America at the 38th parallel,
pummeling it like a machine gun and possibly causing one of five
planetary extinctions - much earlier than the one associated with the
end of the dinosaurs.

If he's right, his discovery could add a significant amount of
information to the late Devonian Extinction Theory.

But Tonko is not a geologist, meteoriticist, or planetologist - rather
the Pueblo native is a hydrologist with the Colorado Division of
Wildlife and acts in his spare time as an amateur prospector looking for
diamonds, gold and other precious metals.

Tonko spends his spare time trekking across the West in search of where
geology tells him "x" marks the spot.

But some say this time he may be digging in the wrong place.
 
Connecting the dots

Tonko said when he's not working for the government he's out
prospecting. Now 48 years old, Tonko said it's been his passion ever
since he was a kid.

"I've had some good successes - I've been able to locate some diamond
pipes out by Fort Collins and some pretty substantial gold bearing ores
over by Almont," Tonko said.

The biggest thing about prospecting is knowing where to look - during
a severe Colorado drought several years ago the hydrologist spent his
summer looking at the bottom of dried up lakes for diamonds.

Recently he discovered precious stones could also be found at the sites
of meteorite impacts.

Trying to locate large craters in Colorado, Tonka decided to draw a line
across the United States based on the craters found at the 38th parallel
- the ones theorized as being a part of the Devonian Extinction.

The line brought him to Gunnison.
 
For a fistful of tektite

Using a globe, instead of a skewed flat map, and looking at arial photos
and satellite imagery Tonko believed he saw the theorized "line" located
in southern Illinois, Missouri and eastern Kansas continuing all the way
to a circular crater in Colorado.

He admits that many circular structures seen from ariel maps can be
attributed to sinkholes or volcanic activity, but the "Gunnison impact
structure" was well within the confines of the lines that he drew along
the 38th parallel.

What he saw from the images were intriguing, not only from a
prospector's point of view, but to someone wanting to advance scientific
knowledge.

"It is really hard to get your mind around the energy that is involved
in making one of these structures," Tonko said.

Tonko came to Gunnison early this fall, to check out the evidence with
his own eyes.

Unwilling to give an exact location, at this point in time, to protect
his "mining claim" Tonko said he was able to fairly quickly extract rock
samples, proving that the area south of the Gunnison Airport, or Hartman
Rocks, was indeed a giant crater.

Those samples include among other things semi-precious tektite, or a
type of natural glass, which is formed by large meteorites hitting the
Earth's surface.

A piece of this "Gunnison tektite" was recently being held for auction
by Tonko on Ebay for $980.50.

Tonko also said he dated the rocks and put their age to the devonian
period.

Tonko is currently getting in contact with scientists involved in
studying similar craters and hopes more scientific work can be done in
the area to further not only the "Gunnison meteorite" hypothesis, but
also the 38th parallel line theory as well.
 
Can looks be Deceiving?

Ted Violet teaches physics and astronomy at Western State College. He
agrees that the potential for a meteorite strike or comet to strafe the
planet is very possible, but doesn't necessarily agree that Hartman
Rocks is the result of that type of phenomena.

If that was the case, he adds, the evidence of a possible meteor strike
would have likely cropped up before now because miners and geologists
have throughly picked over the Hartman Rocks area.

"So unless the geologists (had found something) I would not be inclined
to consider that a very credible hypothesis," Violet said.

Retired Western State geology professor Bruce Bartleson said that
although the Hartman Rocks area looks like a crater, because it is
circular, the idea of it actually being one was "a bunch of baloney."

He states that all geologists believe the area was created either by a
'ring dike,' which is an intrusion of granite poking up into the crust
and coming up in kind of a circular form or they think it was created by
a sheet of granite, which was then folded into a circular shape.

"It does have a circular pattern it's true, but I don't think it has any
other characteristics whatsoever of a meteorite impact," Bartleson said.

He adds that the event that formed Hartman Rocks happened about 1.7
billion years ago - long before the Devonian period.

Bartleson said if Tonko had found tektites associated with Hartman Rocks
that it would be an interesting find, but given the current theories of
the area's formation the idea of a meteorite impact was a remote
possibility.

Tonko said he believes the area's exposed ridge-like granite, which
shows multiple parallel fractures, was produced by the enormous
pressures generated while the crater was being formed by the meteor impact.

Whether a slow natural occurrence or one forced by sudden cataclysmic
forces, one thing is for sure, the debate over the creation of
Gunnison's beloved recreational area is still alive.
 
Received on Fri 29 Dec 2006 06:27:54 PM PST


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