Tabun-Khara-Obo - Hypervelocity Impact Crater

Alternate Names Tavan Khar Ovoo (Schmieder and Kring, 2020).
Coordinates 44° 7' 52" N; 109° 39' 17" E
Notes
  1. SE Mongolia, 90 km SW of the town of Sain-Shand.
Country Mongolia
Region Dornogovi
Date Confirmed 1976
Notes
  1. Confirmed based on PDF's found in quartz grains (Shkerin, 1976).
Buried? No
Notes
  1. The central part of the crater is filled with recent sands and Quaternary deposits of unknown thickness (Shkerin, 1977).
Drilled? No
Target Type Crystalline
Notes
  1. Schists and greenstones of lower to middle Palaeozoic age (Shkerin, 1976).
Sub-Type Greenstone, Schist
Apparent Crater Diameter (km) Unknown
Age (Ma) 130 - 170
Notes :
  1. Shocked quartz in nearby early Cretaceous sediments provides a stratigraphic age of 150 ± 20 Ma (Masaitis, 1999).

Method :
  1. Stratigraphy
Impactor Type Unknown

Advanced Data Fields

Notes

Local Language
N/A
Erosion
2
  1. The ejecta materials are partly preserved (A. Raikhlin, pers. comm.).
Final Rim Diameter
Unknown
Apparent Rim Diameter
Unknown
  1. Highly circular crater has diameter of 1.3 km (McHone and Dietz, 1976).
Rim Reliability Index
1
  1. Consists of a saucer-shaped depression surrounded by a weakly expressed circular rim (Shkerin, 1976). Crater rim rises 20 to 50 m (McHone and Dietz, 1976).
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
No
  1. The presence of shatter cones in quartz-feldspar schists from the Eastern rim of the structure are reported by (Raikhlin et al., 1993). [Not confirmed; (Amgaa, pers. comm., 2009)]
Planar Fractures
No
Planar Deformation Features
Yes
  1. PDF in quartz grains (Shkerin, 1976).
Diaplectic Glass
No
Coesite
No
Stisovite
No
Crater Fill
LB, MB
  1. Minor occurrences of lithic breccia in crater-fill. Some of these breccias contain fragments 3-5 mm across of impact glass in their "fine-grained clastic cement" (matrix) (Masaitis, 1999). Monomict breccias form narrow lenses and polymict breccias form layers outside of the E rim of the crater. The clasts (schists, gneisses, amphibolites) are cemented by carbonates (Tsolmon Amgaa and Koeberl, 2009).
Proximal Ejecta
LB
Distal Ejecta
Unknown
Dykes
Unknown
Volume of Melt
Unknown
Depth of Melting
Unknown

References

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J F McHone, R S Dietz (1976) Tabun Khara Obo crater, Mongolia: Probably meteoritic, Meteoritics 11, p. 332-334, url

M S Mashchak, V L Masaytis, A N Danilin, A I Raykhlin, T V Selivanovskaya, Ye M Shadenkov (1980) The principal features of the geology of some astroblemes in foreign countries; Cenozoic astroblemes and craters; the Tabun-Khara-Obo crater, The geology of astroblemes, Izd. Nedra, Leningrad

O Gerel, A Bischoff, L Schultz, J Schlueter, L Baljinnyam, D Borchuluun, C Byambaa, D Garamjav (1995) The 1993 Euromet/Mongolian expedition to the Gobi Desert; search for meteorites, LPI Technical Report, Ludolf Schultz, John O Annexstad, Michael E Zolensky (ed.), p. 32-33, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, TX, url

T Amgaa, C Koeberl (2009) Impact origin of Tabun Khara Obo crater, Mongolia, confirmed by drill core studies, Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America 41(7), p. 533, Geological Society of America (GSA), Boulder, CO

T Amgaa, C Koeberl (2009) Geology and petrography of Tabun Khara Obo Crater, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 44, SUPPL., p. Abstract 5019, Meteoritical Society, Fayetteville, AR, pdf