The discovery and history of the Dalgaranga meteorite crater, Western Australia

Abstract

The Dalgaranga meteorite crater, 100 km northeast of Yalgoo, Western Australia, was one of the first impact structures identified in Australia, the smallest isolated crater found in Australia, and the only confirmed crater in the world associated with a mesosiderite projectile. Seventeen years passed before the Dalgaranga meteorites were described in the scientific literature, and nearly 40 years passed before a survey of the structure was published. The reasons for the time gap were never explained and a number of factual errors about the discovery and early history remain uncorrected in the scientific literature. Using historical and archival documents, and discussions with people involved in Dalgaranga research, the reasons for this time gap are explained by a series of minor misidentifications and coincidences. The age of the crater has yet to be determined, but using published data, we estimate the projectile mass to be 500–1000 kg.

西澳Yalgoo东北100公里处的Dalgaranga陨石坑是首次发现于澳大利亚的冲撞构造之一，是澳大利亚最小的单个陨石坑，也是世界上唯一的确定的与中铁陨石落体有关的陨石坑。十七年过去了，Dalgaranga陨石才在科学论文里被描绘；近四十年过去了，这个构造的调查才得以发表。造成这种时间间断的原因从未得到解释。科学论文中的一些关于其发现和早期历史的错误一直未得更正。根据历史和档案文件，及与Dalgaranga研究的有关人士进行讨论，时间间断的原因才被解释为一系列小的鉴定错误和巧合。陨石坑的年龄还有待确定，但根据已发表的资料，我们估计落体的质量为500-1000公斤。

KEY WORDS:

• impact structures
• Dalgaranga
• mesosiderite
• history of meteoritics.

关键词:

• 冲撞构造
• Dalgaranga
• 中铁陨石
• 陨石学历史

Acknowledgements

We thank Amy Davis, Gary Huss, Peggy Schaller, Alex Bevan, Joe McCall, John Goldsmith and Peter Downes for their assistance, advice and comments. We are indebted to the Carlsbad City Library (California), Arizona State University Library, the State Library of Western Australia, the Geological Survey of Western Australia, and the Western Australian Museum for archival materials. This research made use of the National Library of Australia's Trove archival database (trove.nla.gov.au), the NASA Astrophysics Data System (adsabs.harvard.edu), and Ancestry.com. We would also like to acknowledge the referees for their helpful and useful comments. O’Neill acknowledges DP110104145, FT100100717, and Centre of Excellence for Core to Crust Fluid Systems (CCFS) support from the Australian Research Council.

Notes

1 Years later, analysis of the Gundaring meteorite revealed that it had been exposed to the elements for quite some time, thus negating it as the remnant of the 1930 fireball (Buchwald 1975; McCall et al. 2006, p. 310).