[meteorite-list] Prospector says Hartman Rocks, meteor strike

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 02:08:54 -0500
Message-ID: <f24cp29iq9n509e69tguvp1citacqa2o96_at_4ax.com>

http://www.gunnisontimes.com/index.php?content=C_news&newsid=4967

December 30, 2006
Prospector says Hartman Rocks, meteor strike


Ian Neligh

If Johnny Tonko is right, then nearly 364 million years ago ??? just as the
first fish started evolving legs ??? a meteorite crashed into the earth with the
force of many hydrogen bombs forming a crater 5 miles across; Gunnison's own
Hartman Rocks
.
This meteorite, according to Tonko, may have also been one in a series of
meteorites that strafed across North America at the 38th parallel, pummeling it
like a machine gun and possibly causing one of five planetary extinctions ???
much earlier than the one associated with the end of the dinosaurs.
If he's right, his discovery could add a significant amount of information to
the late Devonian Extinction Theory.
But Tonko is not a geologist, meteoriticist, or planetologist ??? rather the
Pueblo native is a hydrologist with the Colorado Division of Wildlife and acts
in his spare time as an amateur prospector looking for diamonds, gold and other
precious metals.
Tonko spends his spare time trekking across the West in search of where geology
tells him "x" marks the spot.
But some say this time he may be digging in the wrong place.
 
Connecting the dots
Tonko said when he's not working for the government he's out prospecting. Now 48
years old, Tonko said it's been his passion ever since he was a kid.
"I've had some good successes ??? I've been able to locate some diamond pipes
out by Fort Collins and some pretty substantial gold bearing ores over by
Almont," Tonko said.
The biggest thing about prospecting is knowing where to look ??? during a severe
Colorado drought several years ago the hydrologist spent his summer looking at
the bottom of dried up lakes for diamonds.
Recently he discovered precious stones could also be found at the sites of
meteorite impacts.
Trying to locate large craters in Colorado, Tonka decided to draw a line across
the United States based on the craters found at the 38th parallel ??? the ones
theorized as being a part of the Devonian Extinction.
The line brought him to Gunnison.
 
For a fistful of tektite
Using a globe, instead of a skewed flat map, and looking at arial photos and
satellite imagery Tonko believed he saw the theorized "line" located in southern
Illinois, Missouri and eastern Kansas continuing all the way to a circular
crater in Colorado.
He admits that many circular structures seen from ariel maps can be attributed
to sinkholes or volcanic activity, but the "Gunnison impact structure" was well
within the confines of the lines that he drew along the 38th parallel.
What he saw from the images were intriguing, not only from a prospector's point
of view, but to someone wanting to advance scientific knowledge.
"It is really hard to get your mind around the energy that is involved in making
one of these structures," Tonko said.
Tonko came to Gunnison early this fall, to check out the evidence with his own
eyes.
Unwilling to give an exact location, at this point in time, to protect his
"mining claim" Tonko said he was able to fairly quickly extract rock samples,
proving that the area south of the Gunnison Airport, or Hartman Rocks, was
indeed a giant crater.
Those samples include among other things semi-precious tektite, or a type of
natural glass, which is formed by large meteorites hitting the Earth's surface.
A piece of this "Gunnison tektite" was recently being held for auction by Tonko
on Ebay for $980.50.
Tonko also said he dated the rocks and put their age to the devonian period.
Tonko is currently getting in contact with scientists involved in studying
similar craters and hopes more scientific work can be done in the area to
further not only the "Gunnison meteorite" hypothesis, but also the 38th parallel
line theory as well.
 
Can looks be Deceiving?

Ted Violet teaches physics and astronomy at Western State College. He agrees
that the potential for a meteorite strike or comet to strafe the planet is very
possible, but doesn't necessarily agree that Hartman Rocks is the result of that
type of phenomena.
If that was the case, he adds, the evidence of a possible meteor strike would
have likely cropped up before now because miners and geologists have throughly
picked over the Hartman Rocks area.
"So unless the geologists (had found something) I would not be inclined to
consider that a very credible hypothesis," Violet said.
Retired Western State geology professor Bruce Bartleson said that although the
Hartman Rocks area looks like a crater, because it is circular, the idea of it
actually being one was "a bunch of baloney."

He states that all geologists believe the area was created either by a 'ring
dike,' which is an intrusion of granite poking up into the crust and coming up
in kind of a circular form or they think it was created by a sheet of granite,
which was then folded into a circular shape.
"It does have a circular pattern it's true, but I don't think it has any other
characteristics whatsoever of a meteorite impact," Bartleson said.
He adds that the event that formed Hartman Rocks happened about 1.7 billion
years ago ??? long before the Devonian period.
Bartleson said if Tonko had found tektites associated with Hartman Rocks that it
would be an interesting find, but given the current theories of the area's
formation the idea of a meteorite impact was a remote possibility.
Tonko said he believes the area's exposed ridge-like granite, which shows
multiple parallel fractures, was produced by the enormous pressures generated
while the crater was being formed by the meteor impact.
Whether a slow natural occurrence or one forced by sudden cataclysmic forces,
one thing is for sure, the debate over the creation of Gunnison's beloved
recreational area is still alive.
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Received on Sat 30 Dec 2006 02:08:54 AM PST