[meteorite-list] New or maybe old QUESTION??????

From: Pete Shugar <pshugar_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 01:09:13 -0500
Message-ID: <000c01c8adad$61f87740$0401a8c0_at_laptop>

List,
Maybe this has been asked and answered (sounds like a lawer thing) and maybe
not.
Since I am relatively new to collecting and certainly not an Expert in any
area of meteorite study (with the exception of magnetisum (from the sky
magnetic VS made a magnet by processes here on earth).
Here's my question:
A geologist digs in an area that he thinks there will be the likelyhood of
finding a fossil. Maybe he gets lucky and maybe finds bunches of them.
Has anyone ever found a meteorite buried deep in a layer that is thousands
or even millions of years old?
Years ago--long before I became an obsessed, crazed, meteorite addict,
while teaching a series on earthquakes, I had found a video of a scientist
standing with one foot on the Pacific plate and the other foot on the North
Americian plate, ie astraddle of the San Andreas fault line. In back of him
was a small vertical clift of maybe 10 feet and you could plainly see the
shift (approx 15 inches) in the layers of sediment.
Now I've got to thinking (some say this is my problem--Thinking) that these
meteorites have a tremendous terestial age. If the earth is bombarded by
these meteorites throughout the aeons, then there should be a record, ie
evidence in the form of buried craters (see the Odessa,Tx crater) -- Approx
100 to 110 feet deep that has been filled in till it is only 25 to 30 feet
deep now due to wind blown sand (mostly). I've got a pamplet of "Occasional
Papers of the Strecker Museum" from Baylor University showing a neat cross
section of the Odessa Crater.
How much investigation into the cross section structure of the sediment
layers, looking for evidence of craters has been done? Has there ever been
an accidential discovery of a buried crater in a clift side. Lots of these
erroded mesa exist out west. Maybe evidence is visable there.
Surely Valeria is not the only animal killer out there.
Maybe another animal drilled by a passing meteorite with the coresponding
meteorite near the body. Maybe there's no body but the meteorite is still
there buried in the deeper layers of sediment. Maybe tektites are the only
surviving evidence.
In a nutshell, has there ever been a meteorite found at a depth of sediment
that is plainly very old?
Pete
Received on Sun 04 May 2008 02:09:13 AM PDT