[meteorite-list] Re: Meteorite Contest #8...Free Canyon Diablo

From: Marco Langbroek <marco.langbroek_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:07:04 2004
Message-ID: <004301c27b7e$beb93620$82d986c2_at_latitude>

If I would go for a hunt (and I did actually! But without success so far)
the nearest place to start for me is in the loessic belt of central and
northwest Europe. I think this might be an ignored source for potential
searches. At the edges of chalk plateau's and Pleistocene river terraces
covered with Weichsel loess deposits, the loess cover is currently eroding
and a lag deposit of all larger things in it is created on the surface to
pick over. This lag deposit is a palimpsest of items with a time depth up to
a few hundred-thousands of years. As a professional archaeologist, I have
surveyed for Middle Palaeolithic (and younger) archaeological artefacts in
this kind of areas in Dutch Limburg and yes, I did keep out an eye for
possible meteorites as well (and instructed a few of the students to do so).
of course our current climate in NW Europe is not so suitable for
preservation, but still, given that most of this erosion is from the second
half of the Holocene and most often started as 'late' as medieval times (a
lot of it is anthropogenely induced), not all meteorites that once were
buried in the loess cover (which I think is a suitable protector against
severe weathering) should be completely weathered to destruction.
Another similar option would perhaps be in the shifting dunes in some of the
central parts of our country, where due to medieval farming and hence
vegetation stripping the Pleistocene coversand has began to form active
sanddune and blowout formations.

Marco Langbroek
the Netherlands
Received on Thu 24 Oct 2002 12:55:32 PM PDT