[meteorite-list] Scientists Excited About Potential Impact CraterSite in...

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon May 23 11:27:16 2005
Message-ID: <4291F630.D52D3476_at_bhil.com>

Hi, Doug,

    The article Ron cited was a newspaper article. It contains what the reporter
understood and could remember and we all, sadly, know how that goes! It's only a little
muddled, but I was impressed that the news in Springfield, Missouri, did so relatively
well.
    You'd have to know Springfield, Missouri to appreciate that, in the "cultural capitol"
of the Ozarks. I can be snide about the Mountain William ethnicity, being one myself, down
to the missing tooth, but nobody else better.
    Go to the link:
<http://geosciences.smsu.edu/faculty/Evans/impacts.htm>
    If you move around through Evans' site, you'll see all the geological evidence nicely
presented. He is the guy who has done the drilling and investigation that brought
attention (and proof of shocked quartz) to the impact site and why this conference was
there in the deep Missouri boonies.
    As for the crinoid crowd, my old house, being elevated far above street level, has a
winding walk and stairway up to the door that was made from slabs from the local quarry
here on the Mississippi River's edge, hauled home by the two and threes by my father in our
old Ford in 1939.
    These stones didn't just have fossils in them -- they are solid fossil, a carpet of
crinoids and all their former neighbors in the Ordovician seas of the Mid-West. I think
there may be some Devonian interlopers in there too.
    They were my geology text as a child and I spend many long summer hours crawling up and
down the steps with my nose to the crinoids and other assorted critters.
    This course of study climaxed at the age of six when I took a small sledge hammer and
masonry chisel to the steps and removed a large and perfect Dinorthis from them, much to
the displeasure of my parent!
    He was wise enough to take me to the quarry's trash pile and let me select a few
boxfuls of the most fossiliferous fragments to take home and disassemble if I promised to
leave the steps alone, which I did, so my crinoid walkway is still intact.

Sterling K. Webb
-----------------------------------------------
MexicoDoug_at_aol.com wrote:

> Sterling & Ron commented::
>
> > If a meteorite created the structure, it hit some 300 million years ago
> > when mid-Missouri was part of an ancient Jurassic Age sea. The strike
> > obliterated plant-like crinoids, Koeberl said.
>
> Ancient Jurassic Sea 300 million years ago? ??????? I don't think so...So,
> what does the crinoidal limestone (Burlington Limestone) look like
> there...did it "obliterate" FOSSILIZED REMAINS or the CRINOID ANIMALS THEMSELVES...any
> more info on this comment? Is it an assumption or based on some observation
> of some crinoids...I thought their age was ~345 million years old in that
> locality...but the article mentions a strike 300 million years old...and the
> article refers to a Jurassic age...Jurassic is only 136-190 million years old
> (in the Mesozoic), so the article seems to have left an ambiguous
> chronostratigraphy- and that limestone is from the Paleozoic Mississipian, or
> pennsylvanian, I think...I hope someone could elucidate a bit on this...Also, crinoids
> are animals stuck with"plant-like" and the misnomer "Sea Lilies", but look a
> lot more like brittlestars, the feathery starfish in many parts of the world,
> just they frequently had long stems in prior ages that now look like stacks
> of coins when found fossilized.
> Saludos, Doug
Received on Mon 23 May 2005 11:26:40 AM PDT