Luigi Folco¹, Massimo D’Orazio¹, Agnese Fazio¹, Carole Cordier^2,3, Antonio Zeoli⁴, Matthias van Ginneken⁵ and Ahmed El-Barkooky⁶

¹Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy
²Université de Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, CEDEX 9, France
³CNRS, Istitute des Sciences de la Terre (ISTerre), Grenoble, CEDEX 9, France
⁴Museo Nazionale dell’Antartide, Università di Siena, Siena, Italy
⁵Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College, London, UK
⁶Department of Geology, Faculty of Sciences, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt

We report on the microscopic impactor debris around Kamil crater (45 m in diameter, Egypt) collected during our 2010 geophysical expedition. The hypervelocity impact of Gebel Kamil (Ni-rich ataxite) on a sandstone target produced a downrange ejecta curtain of microscopic impactor debris due SE–SW of the crater (extending ~300,000 m2, up to ~400 m from the crater), in agreement with previous determination of the impactor trajectory. The microscopic impactor debris include vesicular masses, spherules, and coatings of dark impact melt glass which is a mixture of impactor and target materials (Si-, Fe-, and Al-rich glass), plus Fe-Ni oxide spherules and mini shrapnel, documenting that these products can be found in craters as small as few tens of meters in diameter. The estimated mass of the microscopic impactor debris (20 t, likely 50–60 t).

Reference
Luigi Folco L, D’Orazio M, Fazio A, Cordier C, Zeoli A, van Ginneken M and El-Barkooky A (2015) Microscopic impactor debris in the soil around Kamil crater (Egypt): Inventory, distribution, total mass, and implications for the impact scenario. Meteoritics & Planetary Sciences (in Press)
Link to Article [doi:10.1111/maps.12427]

Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons