| Peer-Reviewed

The Cape York Meteorites, the Younger Dryas, and Their Possible Association with the Hiawatha and Paterson Impact Craters

Received: 20 October 2020     Accepted: 2 November 2020     Published: 9 November 2020
Views:       Downloads:
Abstract

The recent discovery of the Hiawatha and Paterson impact craters in north-western Greenland has motivated three intriguing questions: are they associated with the Cape York meteorites, did they form at the same time, and can one or both of the craters be associated with the abrupt cooling of the Earth, some 10 - 13,000 years ago, at the onset of the Younger Dryas. To address the first question, we review the properties of the Cape York meteorites and their associated strewn field. Using the Earth Impact Effects simulator, it is found that the strewn field is generally consistent with the entry of a 2 to 6-m diameter iron asteroid into the Earth’s atmosphere some 1 to 2 million years ago. The latter, terrestrial residency age of the meteorites, however, remains preliminary, and further radionuclide analysis is required to confirm the fall epoch. The possibility that the Cape York meteorites are progenitor fragments ejected at the time of crater formation has been investigated with an atmospheric flight program, and while it is possible to account for progenitor fragments traveling the 300-km distance between either crater location and the strewn field, this scenario is deemed unlikely. Indeed, the craters each being in excess of 30-km in diameter would indicate the complete vaporization of the impactors. It is concluded that the Cape York meteorites are unlikely to be related to the formation of either of the craters. Additionally, the 183-km separation between such large craters is remarkable and suggestive of a contemporaneous origin. We investigate this latter possibility, and while it cannot be fully ruled out at the present time, it is, on the basis of Near-Earth Object population statistics, deemed to be highly unlikely that they formed at the same time. This issue, however, will only be fully resolved once improved age estimates become available. Indeed, better crater formation ages will also shed more light upon their possible association with the Younger Dryas onset. With respect to the global climate excursion associated with the Younger Dryas, we review the possibility that the crater progenitor bodies were derived from the Taurid Complex, finding that this scenario is deserving of further study. Moving forwards, however, the conservative hypothesis, that the two craters are temporally distinct, not related to the Cape York meteorites and/or contemporaneous with the Younger Dryas onset, is favored.

Published in American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics (Volume 8, Issue 4)
DOI 10.11648/j.ajaa.20200804.11
Page(s) 66-74
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Cape York Meteorites, Impact Craters, The Younger Dryas, The Taurid Complex

References
[1] P. A. M. Huntington 2002. Robert E. Peary and the Cape York meteorites. Polar Geophysics, 26, 53-65.
[2] M. Appelt, et al. 2015. The cultural history of the Innaanganeq / Cape York Meteorites. https://www.forskningsdatabasen.dk/en/catalog/2393846340.
[3] K. H. Kjær et al. 2018. A large impact crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier in northwest Greenland. Science Advancement, 4, eaar8173.
[4] D. W. Hughes 2002. A comparison between terrestrial, Cytherean and lunar impact cratering records. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 334, 713-720.
[5] G. S. Collins, H. J. Melosh and R. A. Markus 2005. Earth Impact Effects Program: A Web-based computer program for calculating the regional environmental consequences of a meteoroid impact on Earth. Meteoritics and Planetary Sciences, 40, 817-840.
[6] D. W. Hughes 1993. Meteorite incidence angles. Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 103, 123-126.
[7] A. P. Nutman, P. R. Dawes, F. Kalsbeek, F. and M. A. Hamilton 2008. Palaeoproterozoic and Archaean gneiss complexes in northern Greenland: Palaeoproterozoic terrane assembly in the High Arctic. Precambrian Research, 161, 419-451.
[8] W. M. Napier 2004. A mechanism for interstellar panspermia. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 348, 46-51.
[9] M. Boslough 2013. Greenland Pt anomaly may point to noncataclysmic Cape York meteorite entry. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110, E5035.
[10] D. A. Yeomans 2013. Near-Earth Objects. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
[11] Z. Sekanina and D. H. Yeomans 1984. Close encounters and collisions of comets with the Earth. Astronomical Journal, 89, 154-161.
[12] K. J. Walsh and S. A. Jacobson 2015. In, Asteroids IV, P. Michel et al. (eds.), University of Arizona Press, Tucson. pp: 375-393.
[13] P. A. Taylor, et al. 2019. Radar and optical observations of equal-mass binary near-Earth asteroids (190166) 2005 UP156 and 2017 YE5. 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2019 (LPI Contrib. No. 2132).
[14] J. A. MacGegor et al. 2019. A Possible Second Large Subglacial Impact Crater in Northwest Greenland. Geophysical Research letters, 46, 1496-1504.
[15] J. Klokočník et al. 2020. Support for two subglacial impact craters in nortwest Greenland from Earth gravity model EIGEN 6C4 and other data. Tectonophysics. https/doe.org/10.1016/j.tecto.2020.228396.
[16] R. E. Peary 1898. Northward over the ice, volume II, Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York.
[17] V. F. Buchwald 1975. Handbook of Iron Meteorites, Volume 2. University of California Press.
[18] A. Kracher, G. Kurat and V. F. Buchwald 1977. Cape York: The extraordinary meteorite and its implication mineralogy of an ordinary iron for the genesis of III AB irons. Geochemical Journal, 11, 207-217.
[19] K. J. Mathew and K. Marti 2009. Galactic cosmic ray-produced 129Xe and 131Xe excesses in troilites of the Cape York iron meteorite. Meteoritics and Planetary Sciences, 44, 107-114.
[20] O. Eugster, G. F. Herzog, K. Marti, and M. W. Caffee 2006. In Meteorites and the Early Solar System II. D. S Lauretta & H. Y. McSween (Eds). University of Arizona Press, Tucson. pp. 829-851.
[21] K. Nishiizumi et al. 1987. Terrestrial ages of Antarctic and Greenland meteorites. Meteoritics and Planetary Sciences, 22, 473.
[22] M. Schmieder et al. 2015. New 40Ar/39Ar dating of the Clearwater Lake impact structures (Quebec, Canada) - not the binary asteroid impact it seems? Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 148, 304-324.
[23] A. A. Garde, I. McDonald, B. Dyck and N. Keulen 2012. Searching for giant, ancient impact structures on Earth: The Mesoarchaean Maniitsoq structure, West Greenland. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 197, 337-338.
[24] J. Ormö, E., Sturkell, C., Alwmark, and H. J. Melosh 2014. First known terrestrial impact of a binary asteroid from a main belt breakup event. Nature Scientific Reports, 4: 6724.
[25] H. J. Melosh and G. S. Collins 2005. Meteor crater formed by low-velocity impact. Nature, 434, 157.
[26] H. J. Melosh 1985. Impact cratering mechanics: relationship between the shock wave and excavation flow. Icarus, 62, 339-343.
[27] M. Beech, M. Comte, and I. M. Coulson 2019. The Production of Terrestrial Meteorites – Moon accretion and lithopanspermia. American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 7, 1-9.
[28] F. T. Kyte 1998. A meteorite from the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary. Nature, 396, 237-239.
[29] W. D. Maier et al. 2006. Discovery of a 25-cm asteroid clast in the giant Morokweng impact crater, South Africa. Nature, 441, 203-206.
[30] M. Beech 2014. Grazing Impacts Upon Earth's Surface: Towards an Understanding of the Rio Cuarto Crater Field. Earth, Moon, and Planets, 113, 53-71.
[31] M. Beech 2002. The Mazapil meteorite: from paradigm to periphery. Meteoritics and Planetary Sciences, 37, 649-660.
[32] M. J. Cintala 1981. Meteoroid impact into short-period comet nuclei. Nature, 291, 134-136.
[33] M. Beech and K. Gauer 2002. Cosmic roulette: comets in the main belt asteroid region. Earth, Moon and Planets, 88, 211-221.
[34] M. Beech 2006. Canadian fireball activity from 1962 to 1989. WGN, the Journal of IMO, 34: 4, 104-110.
[35] A. Pauls, and B. Gladman 2010. Decoherence time scales for “meteoroid streams”. Meteoritics and Planetary Sciences, 40, 1241-1256.
[36] M. Pino et al. 2019. Sedimentary record from Patagonia, southern Chile supports cosmic-impact triggering of biomass burning, climate change, and megafaunal extinctions at 12.8ka. Nature Science Reports, 9, Article number: 4413.
[37] A. Moore et al. 2020. Evidence of cosmic impact at Abu Hureyra, Syria at the Younger Dryas onset (~12.8 ka): high temperature melting at > 2200°C. Nature Scientific Reports, 10: 4185.
[38] V. Clube and W. M. Napier 1990. The Cosmic Winter, Blackwell, Oxford.
[39] D. I. Steel and D. D. Asher 1996. The orbital dispersion of the macroscopic Taurid objects. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 280, 806-822.
[40] W. M. Napier 2010. Paleolithic extinctions and the Taurid complex. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 405, 1901-1906.
[41] Levison et al. 2006. On the origin of the unusual orbit of 2P/Encke. Icarus, 182, 161-168.
[42] D. Asher, and V. Clube 1993. An extraterrestrial influence during the current glacial-interglacial. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 34, 481-511.
[43] P. B. Babadzhanov 2001. Search for meteor showers associated with near-Earth asteroids: I. Taurid Complex. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 373, 329-335.
[44] M. Beech, M. Hargrove, and P. Brown 2004. The running of the bulls: a review of Taurid fireball activity since 1962. The Observatory, 124, 277-284.
[45] D. Clark, P. Wiegert and P. G. Brown 2019. The 2019 Taurid resonant swarm: prospects for ground detection of small NEOs. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 487, L35-L39.
[46] L. Kresak 1978. The Tunguska object: a fragment of comet Encke? Bulletin of the Astronomical Institute of Czechoslovakia, 29, 129-134.
[47] D. D. Asher, and D. I. Steel 1998. On the possible relation between the Tunguska bolide and comet Encke. Planetary and Space Science, 46, 205-211.
[48] L. Foschini et al. 2019. The atmospheric fragmentation of the 1908 Tunguska Cosmic Body: reconsidering the possibility of a ground impact. https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.07427
[49] C. Tubiana, et al. 2015. P/Encke, the Taurid complex NEOs and the Maribo and Sutter’s Mill meteorites. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 584, A97.
[50] W. M. Napier 2019. The hazard from fragmenting comets. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 488, 1822-1827.
[51] A. Garde et al. 2020. Pleistocene organic matter modified by the Hiawatha impact, northwest Greenland. Geology, 48, 867-871.
[52] W. S. Broecker 2006. Was the Younger Dryas triggered by a flood? Science, 312, 1146-1148.
Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Martin Beech, Mark Comte, Ian Coulson. (2020). The Cape York Meteorites, the Younger Dryas, and Their Possible Association with the Hiawatha and Paterson Impact Craters. American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 8(4), 66-74. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajaa.20200804.11

    Copy | Download

    ACS Style

    Martin Beech; Mark Comte; Ian Coulson. The Cape York Meteorites, the Younger Dryas, and Their Possible Association with the Hiawatha and Paterson Impact Craters. Am. J. Astron. Astrophys. 2020, 8(4), 66-74. doi: 10.11648/j.ajaa.20200804.11

    Copy | Download

    AMA Style

    Martin Beech, Mark Comte, Ian Coulson. The Cape York Meteorites, the Younger Dryas, and Their Possible Association with the Hiawatha and Paterson Impact Craters. Am J Astron Astrophys. 2020;8(4):66-74. doi: 10.11648/j.ajaa.20200804.11

    Copy | Download

  • @article{10.11648/j.ajaa.20200804.11,
      author = {Martin Beech and Mark Comte and Ian Coulson},
      title = {The Cape York Meteorites, the Younger Dryas, and Their Possible Association with the Hiawatha and Paterson Impact Craters},
      journal = {American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics},
      volume = {8},
      number = {4},
      pages = {66-74},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ajaa.20200804.11},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajaa.20200804.11},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajaa.20200804.11},
      abstract = {The recent discovery of the Hiawatha and Paterson impact craters in north-western Greenland has motivated three intriguing questions: are they associated with the Cape York meteorites, did they form at the same time, and can one or both of the craters be associated with the abrupt cooling of the Earth, some 10 - 13,000 years ago, at the onset of the Younger Dryas. To address the first question, we review the properties of the Cape York meteorites and their associated strewn field. Using the Earth Impact Effects simulator, it is found that the strewn field is generally consistent with the entry of a 2 to 6-m diameter iron asteroid into the Earth’s atmosphere some 1 to 2 million years ago. The latter, terrestrial residency age of the meteorites, however, remains preliminary, and further radionuclide analysis is required to confirm the fall epoch. The possibility that the Cape York meteorites are progenitor fragments ejected at the time of crater formation has been investigated with an atmospheric flight program, and while it is possible to account for progenitor fragments traveling the 300-km distance between either crater location and the strewn field, this scenario is deemed unlikely. Indeed, the craters each being in excess of 30-km in diameter would indicate the complete vaporization of the impactors. It is concluded that the Cape York meteorites are unlikely to be related to the formation of either of the craters. Additionally, the 183-km separation between such large craters is remarkable and suggestive of a contemporaneous origin. We investigate this latter possibility, and while it cannot be fully ruled out at the present time, it is, on the basis of Near-Earth Object population statistics, deemed to be highly unlikely that they formed at the same time. This issue, however, will only be fully resolved once improved age estimates become available. Indeed, better crater formation ages will also shed more light upon their possible association with the Younger Dryas onset. With respect to the global climate excursion associated with the Younger Dryas, we review the possibility that the crater progenitor bodies were derived from the Taurid Complex, finding that this scenario is deserving of further study. Moving forwards, however, the conservative hypothesis, that the two craters are temporally distinct, not related to the Cape York meteorites and/or contemporaneous with the Younger Dryas onset, is favored.},
     year = {2020}
    }
    

    Copy | Download

  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - The Cape York Meteorites, the Younger Dryas, and Their Possible Association with the Hiawatha and Paterson Impact Craters
    AU  - Martin Beech
    AU  - Mark Comte
    AU  - Ian Coulson
    Y1  - 2020/11/09
    PY  - 2020
    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajaa.20200804.11
    DO  - 10.11648/j.ajaa.20200804.11
    T2  - American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics
    JF  - American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics
    JO  - American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics
    SP  - 66
    EP  - 74
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2376-4686
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajaa.20200804.11
    AB  - The recent discovery of the Hiawatha and Paterson impact craters in north-western Greenland has motivated three intriguing questions: are they associated with the Cape York meteorites, did they form at the same time, and can one or both of the craters be associated with the abrupt cooling of the Earth, some 10 - 13,000 years ago, at the onset of the Younger Dryas. To address the first question, we review the properties of the Cape York meteorites and their associated strewn field. Using the Earth Impact Effects simulator, it is found that the strewn field is generally consistent with the entry of a 2 to 6-m diameter iron asteroid into the Earth’s atmosphere some 1 to 2 million years ago. The latter, terrestrial residency age of the meteorites, however, remains preliminary, and further radionuclide analysis is required to confirm the fall epoch. The possibility that the Cape York meteorites are progenitor fragments ejected at the time of crater formation has been investigated with an atmospheric flight program, and while it is possible to account for progenitor fragments traveling the 300-km distance between either crater location and the strewn field, this scenario is deemed unlikely. Indeed, the craters each being in excess of 30-km in diameter would indicate the complete vaporization of the impactors. It is concluded that the Cape York meteorites are unlikely to be related to the formation of either of the craters. Additionally, the 183-km separation between such large craters is remarkable and suggestive of a contemporaneous origin. We investigate this latter possibility, and while it cannot be fully ruled out at the present time, it is, on the basis of Near-Earth Object population statistics, deemed to be highly unlikely that they formed at the same time. This issue, however, will only be fully resolved once improved age estimates become available. Indeed, better crater formation ages will also shed more light upon their possible association with the Younger Dryas onset. With respect to the global climate excursion associated with the Younger Dryas, we review the possibility that the crater progenitor bodies were derived from the Taurid Complex, finding that this scenario is deserving of further study. Moving forwards, however, the conservative hypothesis, that the two craters are temporally distinct, not related to the Cape York meteorites and/or contemporaneous with the Younger Dryas onset, is favored.
    VL  - 8
    IS  - 4
    ER  - 

    Copy | Download

Author Information
  • Campion College, the University of Regina, Regina, Canada

  • Department of Physics, the University of Regina, Regina, Canada

  • Department of Geology, the University of Regina, Regina, Canada

  • Sections