Shunak - Hypervelocity Impact Crater

Alternate Names N/A
Coordinates 47° 12' 31" N; 72° 45' 36" E
Notes
  1. The Balklash region of the Kazakhstan, 250 km WNW of the city of Balkhash.
Country Kazakhstan
Region Karaganda
Date Confirmed 1978
Notes
  1. Confirmed by the presence of shatter cones ~30 cm in length and PDF's in quartz grains of allogenic breccia and ejecta of Mount Yuzhnoya (Fel'dman et al., 1978).
Buried? No
Notes
  1. The floor is covered over with ~200 m of Tertiary (Neogene) clays and sands (Dabizha and Fel'dman, 1982).
Drilled? Yes
Notes
  1. During the survey of 1968, 5 boreholes were drilled. In 1977, 6 boreholes with depths of up to 25 m penetrated Quaternary sands. Pliocene shales, Miocene clays and into allogenic breccia of volcanic rocks (Masaitis et al., 1980)
Target Type Crystalline
Notes
  1. Middle Devonian felsic volcanics (Dabizha and Fel'dman, 1982).
Sub-Type Volcanics
Apparent Crater Diameter (km) 2.8 km
Age (Ma) 7 - 17
Notes :
  1. Stratigraphic age is suggested to be 7-17 Ma (Dabizha and Fel'dman 1982). Additional age constraints: The lowest level of the lake deposits contain Miocene flora, therefore the age of the crater is not more than 20 Ma (Khryanina and Zeilik, 1980).

Method :
  1. Stratigraphy
Impactor Type Unknown

Advanced Data Fields

Notes

Local Language
N/A
Erosion
2
  1. The ejecta beyond the crater and the rim have been removed by erosion (Dabizha and Fel'dman, 1982).
Final Rim Diameter
Unknown
Apparent Rim Diameter
2.8 km
  1. Dimensions from diagram of (Masaitis et al., 1980). See also (Dabizha and Fel'dman, 1982).
Rim Reliability Index
1
  1. Exhibits a well-preserved dish-shaped form with a flat bottom 2 km wide and raised rim (Dabizha and Fel'dman, 1982).
Crater Morphology
Simple
Central Uplift Diameter
Unknown
Central Uplift Height
Unknown
Uplift Reliability Index
Unknown
Structural Uplift
Unknown
Thickness of Seds
Unknown
Target Age
Palaeozoic
Marine
No
Impactor Type
Unknown
Other Shock Metamorphism
No
Shatter Cones
Yes
  1. Shatter cones (Fel'dman et al., 1978) (Khryanina and Zeylik, 1980) (Khyranina, 1987) in allogenic breccia and ejecta of Mount Yuzhnoya + or <30 cm in length. LETS DOUBLE CHECK
Planar Fractures
No
Planar Deformation Features
Yes
  1. PDF in quartz grains in allogenic breccia (Khyranina and Zeilik, 1980) (Khyranina 1987) and veined quartz fragments (Khyranina and Zelik, 1980).
Diaplectic Glass
No
Coesite
No
Stisovite
No
Crater Fill
LB, MB
  1. "Allogenic breccias" as crater-fill with a thickness of > 100 m are reported. A lense of blocks and fragments of volcanic rocks, cemented with a calyey-sandy material with fragments of glass are also reported. MB? (Fel'dman and Granovsky, 1977) (Masaitis, 1999). No descriptions.
Proximal Ejecta
Unknown
Distal Ejecta
Unknown
Dykes
Unknown
Volume of Melt
Unknown
Depth of Melting
Unknown

References

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D M Borisenko, V N Levin (1977) Ring structures; are they diatremes or meteorite craters? (Example of the Tortkul and Shunak structures), Doklady. Earth Science Sections 237(1-6), p. 124-126, Scripta Publishing, Silver Spring, MD, url

V I Fel'dman, L B Granovsky (1978) Meteorite crater Shunak, the Central Kazakhstan, USSR, Lunar and Planetary Science IX 9, p. 312-313, url

V I Fel'dman, A I Dabizha, L B Granovskiy (1979) The Shunak meteor crater, Meteoritika(38), p. 99-103, Akademiya Nauk SSSR, Moscow, url

I V Vasil'yev, V V Klyushkin, L A Panova, N V Tolstikova (1980) New data on the Miocene stratigraphy of the ring morphostructure of the Shunak Massif; central Kazakhstan, Sovetskaya Geologiya 9, p. 68-73, Izdatel'stvo Nedra, Moscow, url

T V Selivanovskaya, V L Masaytis, A N Danilin, M S Mashchak, A I Raykhlin, Y M Shadenkov (1980) The geology of astroblemes in the USSR; Cenozoic astroblemes; the Shunak Crater, The geology of astroblemes, Izd. Nedra, Leningrad, url

L P Khryanina, B S Zeylik (1980) Geological structure of the Shunak Crater and evidence of meteorite impact, Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR. Seriya Geologicheskaya 1980(3), p. 124-134, Akademiya Nauk SSSR, Moscow, url

V I Fel'dman, L B Granovskiy, A I Dabizha (1981) The Shunak meteorite crater, Impactites, A A Marakusheva (ed.), Izd. Mosk. Univ., Moscow, url

G Komatsu, A Coletta, M L Battagliere, M Virelli (2019) Shunak, Kazakhstan, Encyclopedic Atlas of Terrestrial Impact Craters, p. 195-197, Springer, Cham, url, doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05451-9_48