Santa Fe - Hypervelocity Impact Crater

Alternate Names
Local Language
Coordinates 35° 45' 7" N; 105° 55' 59" W
Notes
  1. ~5 km NE of Santa Fe.
Country United States of America
Region New Mexico
Date Confirmed 2006
Notes
  1. Confirmed based on presence of well-developed shatter cones in intrusive igneous and metamorphic rocks, occurring within a 5.5 km^2 area (Fackleman, 2006).
Buried? No
Drilled? No
Target Type Crystalline
Notes
  1. Paleoproterozoic igneous and metamorphic rocks.
Sub-Type
Apparent Crater Diameter (km) 13 km
Age (Ma) 350 - 1472
Notes :
  1. A range of 350 to 1472 Ma is recommended based on U-Pb geochronology of shocked detrital zircon grains, which provided a maximum impact age of 1472 ± 35 Ma (Montalvo et al., 2018). Additional age constraints: The age of the target rocks suggests a stratigraphic age between 299 and 1200 Ma. The lowest, relatively undeformed Palaeozoic shallow-marine sedimentary rocks that overlie Proterozoic rocks are Mississippian quartzite and limestone as well as widespread Pennsylvanian limestone, calcareous siltstone, shale, and minor sandstone of the Madera Group (Fackelman et al., 2008).

Method :
  1. U-Pb
Impactor Type Unknown

Advanced Data Fields

Notes

Erosion
7
  1. No crater-form remains
Final Rim Diameter
Unknown
Apparent Rim Diameter
13 km
  1. Apparent diameter ranges from ~6 to 13 km. No crater-form (Fackelman et al., 2008).
Rim Reliability Index
2
  1. (Fackelman et al., 2008)
Crater Morphology
Complex
Central Uplift Diameter
~3km
Central Uplift Height
Unknown
Uplift Reliability Index
4
Structural Uplift
Unknown
Thickness of Seds
Target Age
Precambrian
Marine
No
Impactor Type
Other Shock Metamorphism
Shock-twinned zircon and shock-twinned xenotime
  1. Shock-twinned zircon in shatter cone of biotite schist and also as detrital grains by Montalvo et al. (2019). Shock-twinned xenotime in shatter cone of granite reported by Cavosie et al. (2016)."
Shatter Cones
Yes
  1. Shatter cones were discovered during fieldworks in 2005 by T. H. McElvain. Well-developed shatter cones occur in Paleoproterozoic intrusive igneous (mainly fine- to medium-grained equigranular granitoid) and metamorphic rocks (quartzofeldspathic unit and amphibolite) (Fackelman et al., 2006) (Fackelman et al., 2008). They occur within an ~5.5 km2 area. Shatter cones are characterized by "nested and complexly intersecting series of sub-conical, curviplanar, and flat joint surfaces bearing abundant curved and bifurcating striations." Complete cones are rare (apical angles of ~90°). Shatter cones are best developed in granitoid and amphibolite, where they can reach up to ~2 m in lenght and ~0.5 m in width at the base. In foliated and banded rocks, such as the schist, quartzite, and gneiss, the cones are generally smaller and less well developed, with axis lengths up to ~1 m and ~0.3 m in width at the base. Possible melt features sub-millimeter-scale, dark, semi-opaque to isotropic veneers on cone surfaces and veinlets within cone interiors closely resemble shock-induced melt features. Other microscopic alteration of mineral grains, restricted generally to within 1 mm of the shatter cone surfaces and adjacent to veinlets in their interior, includes common random fractures, common fluid micro-inclusions, common sericite replacement in feldspar, rare kink bands in mica, rare optical mosaicism, and rare decorated PFs and PDFs in quartz. The PFs and PDFs are dominated by a (basal, 0001) crystallographic orientation.
Planar Fractures
No
Planar Deformation Features
Yes
  1. (Fackleman et al., 2008)
Diaplectic Glass
No
Coesite
No
Stisovite
No
Crater Fill
  1. The structure has been eroded below the crater floor. Crater-fill impactites have been completaly eroded (Fackelman et al., 2008) (Montalvo et al., 2019).
Proximal Ejecta
Distal Ejecta
Dykes
Volume of Melt
Depth of Melting

References

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S P Fackelman, T H McElvain, J R Morrow, C Koeberl (2006) Shatter cone occurrences indicate a possible impact structure near Santa Fe, New Mexico, Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America 38(7), p. 298, Geological Society of America (GSA), Boulder, CO, url

T H McElvain (2007) Evidence for a major impact structure in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, near Santa Fe, New Mexico, Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America 39(5), p. 11-12, Geological Society of America (GSA), Boulder, CO, url

S P Fackelman, T H McElvain, J R Morrow, C Koeberl (2007) Shatter cone exposures indicate a new bolide impact structure near Santa Fe, New Mexico, Abstracts of Papers Submitted to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 38, p. unpaginated, Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Houston, TX, url

E L Tegtmeier, H E Newsom, Wolfgang E Elston, T H McElvain (2008) Breccias and geological setting of the Santa Fe, New Mexico USA impact structure, LPI Contribution

S P Fackelman, J R Morrow, C Koeberl, T H McElvain (2008) Shatter cone and microscopic shock-alteration evidence for a post-Paleoproterozoic terrestrial impact structure near Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 270(3-4), p. 290-299, Elsevier, Amsterdam, url, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2008.03.033

J R Morrow, C Koeberl, W U Reimold (2008) Microscopic shock-alteration features in shatter cones from the Santa Fe impact structure, New Mexico, USA, Large Meteorite Impacts and Planetary Evolution IV, p. 3037, pdf

S P Wright, E L Tegtmeier, H E Newsom (2010) Diversity of breccias associated with the Santa Fe impact structure, Abstracts of Papers Submitted to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 41, p. Abstract 1286, Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Houston, TX, url

C M Schrader, Barbara A Cohen (2010) Petrology of the crystalline rocks hosting the Santa Fe impact structure, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 74(12, Suppl. 1), p. 1, Elsevier, New York, NY, url

A Wallendahl (2011) Santa Fe impact crater discovery: A series of fortunate events, Earth 56(10), p. 40-44, American Geological Institute, Alexandria, VA, pdf

H Newsom, S P Wright, J S Caine (2011) The Santa Fe impact structure: Clues to decades-old geologic puzzles in the southern Sangre de Cristo mountains and regional proterozoic tectonics of New Mexico, USA, Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America 43(5), p. 74, Geological Society of America (GSA), Boulder, CO, url

C M Lugo-Centeno, A J Cavosie, H A Radovan (2012) A search for detrital shocked zircons eroded from the Santa Fe impact structure, New Mexico, USA, Abstracts of Papers Submitted to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 43, p. Abstract 2014, Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Houston, TX, url

S Wright, H Newsom, T McElvain (2012) Craters of the Southwest both young and old, small and large; Meteor Crater, AZ and Santa Fe, NM, Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America 44(6), p. 88, Geological Society of America (GSA), Boulder, CO, url

C M Lugo-Centeno, A J Cavosie, H A Radovan (2013) A search for detrital shocked zircons in the eroded Santa Fe impact structure, New Mexico, USA, Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America 45(2), p. 61, Geological Society of America (GSA), Boulder, CO, pdf

A J Cavosie, C M Lugo-Centeno (2014) Shocked apatite from the Santa Fe impact structure (USA): A new accessory mineral for studies of shock metamorphism, Abstracts of Papers Submitted to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 45, p. Abstract 1691, Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Houston, TX, url

D Colon Lugo, A J Cavosie (2014) Detrital shocked muscovite from the Santa Fe impact structure (USA), Abstracts of Papers Submitted to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 45, p. 2033, Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Houston, TX, pdf

P E Montalvo, A J Cavosie (2014) Expanding the distribution of shocked bedrock at the Santa Fe impact structure (NM, USA) based on new detrital shocked mineral localities, Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America 46(6), p. 760, Geological Society of America (GSA), Boulder, CO, url

C M Lugo-Centeno, A J Cavosie (2014) First Report of Shocked Zircon at the Santa Fe Impact Structure (USA), 45th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 1, p. 3-4, url

P E Montalvo, A J Cavosie (2015) Expanding the distribution of shocked minerals at the Santa Fe impact structure (NM, USA), 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, p. 2033

A J Cavosie (2017) Shock Deformation at Degraded Impact Craters: The Santa Fe Structure, 80th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society, p. 6106, url

P E Montalvo, A J Cavosie, C L Kirkland, Noreen J Evans, B J McDonald, Talavera, T M Erickson, C M Lugo-Centeno (2019) Detrital shocked zircon provides first radiometric age constraint (<1472 Ma) for the Santa Fe impact structure, New Mexico, USA, Geological Society of America Bulletin 131(5-6), p. 845-863, Geological Society of America, url, doi:10.1130/B31761.1

Enrico Flamini, A Coletta, M L Battagliere, M Virelli (2019) Santa Fe, USA, Encyclopedic Atlas of Terrestrial Impact Craters, p. 601-603, Springer, Cham, url, doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05451-9_167

R Kavkova, G Kletetschka, H Ucar (2020) Possible Demagnetization by Shock During the Santa Fe Crater Formation, LPI Contributions, p. 2062, url