Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Can a comet impact deposit an iridium layer?

re: Can a comet impact deposit an iridium layer?
Chris Vancil — (archived)

This is from a site on the iridium and the K/T boundary.

***
Was the impactor an asteroid or a comet? The late Dr. Gene Shoemaker thought that the bolide was a comet, but there is still much uncertainty on this point. At least one researcher believes that he may have found a piece of the impactor, itself. Frank Kyte of the University of California, Los Angeles has found a small piece of a highly weathered stoney meteorite in a deep sea sediment core that was collected from the central Pacific Ocean (Kyte, 1998). Dr. Kyte suspects that the Yucatan impactor was an asteroid. The meteorite fragment from the Pacific Ocean was found in the thin K/T boundary layer containing air-fall settle-out from the impact (Kerr, 1996). Kyte believes that the odds of such an association are too unlikely to be coincidence, although he admits that his discovery is not proof that the meteorite fragment is part of the bolide. If it was part of the bolide, it may have been blasted away from the Yucatan impact site and deposited in the Pacific Ocean (alternatively, it may not have been part of the main bolide mass, and instead impacted into the Pacific Ocean separately). Here's more information on the meteorite fragment from the K-T boundary.
***

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (50 posts)