Goat Paddock crater

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Landsat image of the Goat Paddock crater (circular feature in centre); screen capture from the NASA World Wind program
Landsat image of the Goat Paddock crater (circular feature in centre); screen capture from the NASA World Wind program
Oblique Landsat image draped over digital elevation data (x3 vertical exaggeration), Goat Paddock crater (circular feature in centre); screen capture from the NASA World Wind program
Oblique Landsat image draped over digital elevation data (x3 vertical exaggeration), Goat Paddock crater (circular feature in centre); screen capture from the NASA World Wind program

Goat Paddock is a 5 km-diameter near-circular bowl-shaped depression in a range of gently dipping Proterozoic sandstone in the Kimberley Region of northern Western Australia, 106 km west-southwest of Halls Creek. It is interpreted as an ancient meteorite impact crater, the evidence including breccia containing melted rocks, silica glass, shatter cones and shocked quartz.[1],[2] Drilling shows that the crater is filled with about 200 m of ancient lake sediments containing Early Eocene pollen, this age thus giving a minimum estimate for the age of the crater itself.[1] The crater is not perfectly circular, but slightly elongated in a north–south direction, suggesting that the projectile struck at low angle from either the north or south.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Harms J.E., Milton D.J., Ferguson J., Gilbert D.J., Harris W.K. & Goleby B. 1980. Goat Paddock cryptoexplosion crater, Western Australia. Nature 286, 704–706. Abstract
  2. ^ Milton D.J. & Macdonald F.A. 2005. Goat Paddock, Western Australia: an impact crater near the simple – complex transition. Australian Journal of Earth Sciences 52, 691–698. Abstract

[edit] External links

Goat Paddock at Earth Impact Database, retrieved 24 March 2007.

Coordinates: 18°20′S, 126°40′E


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