Ancient Impact Crater? Photo Gallery by Gordon W at pbase.com

Ancient Impact Crater?

In my youth I once had aspirations of becoming an astronomer. Life didn't work out that way, but I've always retained a keen interest in astronomy. One area of this field that fascinates me is the possibility of a large cosmic object hitting the earth with devastating force and the history of such events that have happened in the past.

Due to forces at work on the Earth's surface, evidence of these hits is difficult to find, often even when shown where scientists figure the hit occurred, like the massive one off the Yucatan Peninsula.

So, I was surprised the other day when I was checking out the latest version of a software package I own a license to called EarthBrowser and I was looking at the area where I was located at that time (southwest USA) and noticed what looks like the remnants of an impact crater.

Anyone with even a minimal interest in this subject knows about Arizona's Barringer Crater 35 miles east of Flagstaff, but the one I see the outline of, as shown in the images in this gallery, is far larger, covering fully the NE quadrant of Arizona, NW quadrant of New Mexico, SW quadrant of Colorado, and SE quadrant of Utah, with a strike location near the Four Corners.

In doing some research on the internet, I can find no mention of such an ancient impact crater having been unearthed, so am I seeing things with an overactive imagination or could this possibly be a discovery?

If what I see really is visual evidence of an impact, an event that could have caused a crater of this size would have had to have caused momumental devastation.

Anyone know anything about this?

12 Feb 2006

Impact-Map1	Impact-Map1 - with crater indicated	Impact-Map2	Impact-Map2 with crater indicated
Impact-Map3	Impact-Map3 - with crater indicated

David Carlson		20-Oct-2013 03:44
I think this is a "Great Unconformity" impact from around 542 Ma with Needle Mountains as the aqueously-differentiated planetesimal core. In this regard, Needle Mountains may correspond to Belcher Islands near the center of the somewhat-larger 450 km Dia Nastapoka arc impact from about 12,900 years ago.

Lyle Craig		19-Oct-2011 09:07
Yes, I know of this crater, its obvious and it can easily be seen on the news during the weather segments. I've been doing some research and found that it had and still has a significant impact to the regions weather. Also, how the surrounding region's erosion course reflects the evidence of an impact of a space object of enormous size. Before the impact, the elevation of this region was as high as the rest of the Colorado Rockies and had peaks as high as 12,000 to 15,000 ft. Most of the debris was pushed down south creating the brim that runs from Flagstaff, AZ; Payson, AZ and the Gila Wilderness's Mountain in New Mexico. The mountains that surround the crater are considered to be sacred to the Navajo, like Hesperus in CO, Blanco in CO, Sanfrancisco Peak in AZ, Navajo Mt. in Utah and Mt. Taylor in NM. Spending most of my life in the crater confirms my believe that this is in fact a Crater, by the regions I've been to and also the geology of the soil. Coil deposits are in different regions of the crater which leaves me to believe that the crater was made before the Jurassic era. The Chuska Mt. is the remnants of a typical impact of a formed crater in which after impact, at the center, left over remnants of earth crust was left. I have more information about the crater which I won't share until I have a written consent of some sort of patent you could help me with. I know the history of Navajo Land, so I'd be a good prospect for us to get our information and our theories about this region into school books.

Dan		07-Jan-2011 22:55
I didn'think I would be back this soon. Check out the site www.impactstructure.net/ Thorton H (Tim) McElvain has been working on the same location and has found evidence for this huge impact.

Dan		07-Jan-2011 20:38
I see the ring and that is a starting point, but just a starting point. Get the January 2011 "Geology" journal and read "Shrinking of the Colorado Plateau via lithospheric mantle erosion: Evidence from Nd and SR isotopes and geochronology of Neogene basalts" You will see that the Colorado Plateau almost fits the ring. Page 29, fig5 shows the relationship of the mantle and vulcanism to the plateau. That is the bad news. The good news is that fig 5 could also show a relationship that one might expect from an impact. Since an impact, would precede the Neogene vulcanism, the best guess time window, would be 10Ma to 40Ma. Sedimentary layers older that that, should be disrupted and more so, towards the center. Sedimentary layers younger that would remain intact and contain diamictites. Good luck. If you are in it for the knowledge, it won't make a difference to you, if the ring isn't impact formed.

mysticcoyote		29-Nov-2010 04:20
Gordon: You are the first person I know who has publicly published anything on this pattern. I first noticed the pattern while looking at some SAT photos back in the mid 90's and have remained intrigued by the possibility. I am a landscape architect/environmental planner/cultural anthropologist with background in geology (lived/worked in Moab, Utah back in the late '70s - uranium mining industry)... not a practicing geologist however. I have bicycle toured extensively in the southwest, and on my journeys have continued (but not exhaustively) to look for evidence that might confirm this hypothesis. I have mentioned the idea to several individuals, and have kept some notes.The current accepted explanation for the topographic relief in the west is that the primary driver is plate tectonics... so to prove this would be an intersting revision! There ARE several lines of evidence that can be brought to bear on this, and that seem to support this hypothesis... but there are some specific types of evidence that have yet to materialize. I have kept my eyes on this question over the years, and was searhing the web tonight and up popped your post.. had not seen it before. I will post some other images to this site that also show the pattern and cross-reference your post. The aerial photos definitely suggest this interpretation, and,... If it looks like duck, and walks like a duck, maybe its a duck! -RLW

Jeanmarie Hamilton		02-Apr-2010 20:09
I'm so glad to find your web site about this land feature around the Four Corners area of the southwestern US. I've been waiting for years, and hoping that scentists would come foreward with studies of the area, but they don't talk enough about it, or whether any studies been made of impact blasted quartz. I first noticed it on weather reports showing clouds outlining the higher edges during winter storms. The Mogollon Rim forms one of the southwestern edges in Arizona. The area around Gallup with the rock pinnacles standing out completely bare, looks like the area was blasted by an explosion of some kind. The Petrified Forest could be the remains of huge trees blown down by a blast, and they fossilized 225 million years ago in the Triassic period. I not only see the circular formation centering around the Four Corners area, but also at least two more overlapping circular formations north of there both slightly smaller in size. When I look at geological maps taken from satellites, I can see rays of soil and rocks fanning out on the soutwest side of the largest circle. Same sort of rays I've noticed in photos of impact craters in other part of the earth and the moon. Wish some scientists would publish their studies on this area. Good to see all the posts here, and this page. Thanks.

Suzanne Bredlau Turgeon		06-Oct-2009 01:30
The crater-like feature first popped out at me while watching tv weather reports and seeing the popular enhanced geologic features maps that satellite imagery has produced. Considering what masking strata overlies this area does indeed suggest great age, on the order of a couple of or several billions of years. It might be worth considering this as a potential impact site, especially in light of the puzzle of what caused the catastrophic Great Unconformity, and pressing the scientific community to get over itself and to be a little more flexible and start investigating this area as a possible single-cause megafeature. The more we know about the nature of impacts, to identify or rule out possibilities, and to re-evaluate known geologic data in that light, the more we learn about the planet -- and the more quickly; plus, such information can be used to inform us about NEO observation and the asteroids and comets that have and may impact Earth.

Guest		01-Mar-2008 13:58
I think it really looks like an impact structures. The fact that lots of volcanic activities have occured there, could be the result of that impact. The impact could have weakened the crust, thus allowing magma to reach the surface more easily. We have a famous impact structure in Québec, which has weakened the crust, and still to this day, allow earthquakes to occur daily. La Malbaie. http://www.pbase.com/norm4fun/image/68883191

Karen Moen		10-Jan-2008 08:23
Wow, this is an intriguing idea. I hope you get some more feedback from scientists in the know. I have often thought that the western part of the Gulf of Mexico looks like it might have had more than one hit. Good luck on your quest!

Guest		13-Apr-2007 11:46
Gordon- I am a retired geophysicist but not a geological type. I did a lot of work in remote sensing, however. I have long wondered about the possibility of very ancient impact craters being marginally detectable on satellite imagery and the one you have suggested is my prime candidate. The area you have circled includes the San Juan Basin which is an oil and gas (mostly gas) province. Also, the circle you have drawn touches on at least three volcanic regions. The first, on the east side, is the huge caldera that Los Alamos is situated on, the second (on the south) is the peak near Springer, New Mexico and the third is the volcanic San Francisco peaks just outside Flagstaff, AZ. The top of your circle goes through the San Juan Mountains which, as I understand it, include some volcanic structures also. My understanding of the origin of the Grand Canyon is that all those horizontal layers you see were uplifted over time and the Colorado River cut down through as the uplift occurred. I have not done the kind of research that would be required to even start a professional investigation, but here goes my hair-brained scheme. The impact is very old, on the order of a billion years, and a lot of surface changes have taken place since the impact. What we see today is the surface expression of the Earth slowly continuing to readjust to the impact. The San Juan Basin would be the result of sediment in-filling at the center of impact. The volcanic would be related to readjustment around the perimeter of the impact and the Colorado Plateau uplift would be the result of rebound around the perimeter. Of course this could all be nonsense. But when we look at the Moon we see very old huge impact craters and it would stand to reason that Earth was also impacted and there were at one time similar craters here. The argument goes that erosion and tectonic processes here are so dynamic that all traces of really old impacts are obliterated. So, who knows? Then there is also the relatively recent discovery that Yellowstone contains a very large caldera that has exploded roughly every 600,000 years for three events creating hugh ash falls over the states to the east. This is what geologists have taken to calling a "hot spot". The Hawaiian Islands have been formed as the Pacific Plate has moved across another hot spot. The oldest island in the chain of islands thus formed is Midway Island. As far as I know, there is no accepted theory as to the origin of these hot spots. Could they also be the result of very ancient impacts? The problem is that there is a big difference between speculation and constructing a thesis that will even be given serious consideration. I have actually done serious work on another idea and have had a hard time even getting consideration for publication. That's just the way science is. It tends to be very conservative because of the possibility of running amok without lots of discipline. That's why you hear about some guy working for years and years getting what had been his hair-brained idea adopted as a working theory. Who knows? Maybe some day you will pick up the paper and there will be this map of the southwestern U.S. with a huge circle and you will be able to say, "Well, I knew that." Bill Stringer Fairbanks, Alaska

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