Gosses Bluff - Hypervelocity Impact Crater

Alternate Names
Local Language Tnorala (Hamacher and Goldsmith, 2013).
Coordinates 23° 49' 9" S; 132° 18' 24" E
Notes
  1. Missionary Plain, 160 km W of Alice Springs, Northern Territory.
Country Australia
Region Northern Territory
Date Confirmed 1966
Notes
  1. Confirmed by shatter cone exposure in sandstone of the core of the bluff carry, in the strata forming the rim of the bluff, and outside of the rim (up to 3.2 km away from centre of bluff); shatter cones also occur in drill cores down to at least 952 m (Crook and Cook, 1966).
Buried? No
Notes
  1. The central uplifted rocks are exposed, the remaining area is covered by alluvium (Milton et al., 1972).
Drilled? Yes
Notes
  1. One exploratory well was drilled in the centre of the bluff to at least a depth of 1.38 km (Milton et al.,1972). 8 holes drilled in vicinity (Cook, 1966).
Target Type Sedimentary
Notes
  1. Ordovician sandstones and siltstones to Devonian sandstones, siltstones and conglomerates and Cambrian sandstones, siltstones and minor carbonates (Milton et al., 1972).
Sub-Type Conglomerate, Minorcarbonate, Sandstone, Siltstone
Apparent Crater Diameter (km) 32 km
Age (Ma) 165 - 383
Notes :
  1. A rough estimate of 383 to 165 Ma is based on 40Ar/39Ar of impact melt rock (Haines, 2005) (Schmieder and Kring, 2020). Ar isotope studies of pumiceous suevite provides an age of 142.5 ± 0.8 Ma (Milton and Sutter, 1987).

Method :
  1. 40Ar/39Ar
Impactor Type Unknown

Advanced Data Fields

Notes

Erosion
6
  1. Eroded to just beneath the crater floor and has laid bare the central uplift (Milton et al., 1972). Erosion has completely removed the rim and nearly all the crater-fill material. Breccia dykes are observed (Milton et al., 1996a).
Final Rim Diameter
Unknown
Apparent Rim Diameter
32 km
  1. On the basis of a new relationship to derive the apparent diameter using maximum shatter cone extent, the diameter is 32 km (Osinski and Ferriere, 2016). 22km by remote sensing Landsat, ERS-1 (Prinz, 1996) 23km geophysics (Barlow, 1979) Gravity and magnetic surveys show it is 12 miles wide [19.3 km] (Dietz, 1967). Diameter of Bluff is 5 km, may be remnants of the central uplift (Milton et al., 1972).
Rim Reliability Index
2
  1. A circular ridge of erosion resistive sandstone, 5 km in diameter, rises approximatetly 200 m above the surrounding plains. The strata are upturned and the sequence becomes increasingly older towards the centre (Milton et al., 1972). SU is poorly constrained at 3 km.
Crater Morphology
Complex
Central Uplift Diameter
km
Central Uplift Height
Unknown
Uplift Reliability Index
Structural Uplift
3 km
Thickness of Seds
4.5 km
Target Age
Palaeozoic
Marine
No
Impactor Type
Other Shock Metamorphism
Reidite, shock-twinned zircon, and FRIGN zircon
  1. Reidite, shock-twinned zircon, and FRIGN zircon found in impact melt rock by Cousins et al. (2022).
Shatter Cones
Yes
  1. The first shatter cones were found by Crook K.A.W in 1964 (Cook, 1968). Shatter cones are (well-) developed in sandstone, limestone, mudstone, gritstone, conglomerate, and shale; they also occur in breccia clasts (Milton et al., 1996). They are characteristically 20-30 cm long, although 2 m long segments occur in the more massive sandtsone. Single complete cones are rare (only in sandstones) (Milton et al., 1996). Shatter-fracturing is found to at least 6.5 km from the centre of the structure (Milton et al., 1996). Shatter cones occur in drillcore at several levels down to at least 952 m (Crook and Cook, 1966). Shatter cone clasts in breccia are reported from drillcores (Cook, 1968) and also from breccia outcrops located around the bluff (Dietz, 1967). Shatter cones are exposed in the core of the Bluff carry, in the strata forming the rim of the Bluff, and also outside the 'rim", as for example at Mt Pyroclast [about 3.2 km from the centre of the Bluff] (Crook and Cook, 1966). Apical angles range from 66-96° with a mean of 80.3° (Milton et al., 1996). (Milton et al., 1972) report on some measurements of shatter cone orientation. Shatter cones vectors measured at 86 localities in the central uplift and surrounding zone (Milton, 1969). The angle between bedding and the upward-pointing axes decreases from over 80° near the centre to 5° at 4.5 km out (Milton, 1969). (Milton, 1969) also reports on some "differences of cone orientation between nearby localities". (Cook, 1968) reports on 3 to 4 different orientations of shatter cones on a single hand specimen. (Dietz, 1967) says that "Gosses Bluff is the most intensely shatter coned of the eighteen sites I know around the world and the cones show a high degree of preferred orientation".
Planar Fractures
No
Planar Deformation Features
Yes
  1. PDF in quartz grains (Cook 1968) (Milton et al., 1971).
Diaplectic Glass
No
Coesite
No
Stisovite
No
Crater Fill
LB, MB
  1. (Kenkmann et al., 2018). Lithic breccia dykes and partly melted fragments of recrystallized sandstone (melt-bearing breccia) (Milton et al., 1996a).
Proximal Ejecta
Distal Ejecta
Dykes
LB
Volume of Melt
Depth of Melting

References

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K A W Crook, P J Cook (1966) Gosses Bluff: Diapir, crypto-volcanic structure or astrobleme?, Journal of the Geological Society of Australia 13(2), p. 495-515, Geological Society of Australia, Sydney, N.S.W., url

K A W Crook (1967) Cosmic ice residuum associated with an astrobleme?, Nature (London) 213(5080), p. 999-1000, Macmillan Journals, London, url

R S Dietz (1967) Shatter cone orientation at Gosses Bluff astrobleme, Nature (London) 216(5120), p. 1082-1084, Macmillan Journals, London, url

A Y Glikson (1969) Geology of the outer zone of the Gosses Bluff crypto-explosion structure, Record - Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics, p. 31, Geoscience Australia, Canberra, A.C.T., url

D J Milton, B C Barlow, R Brett, A Y Brown, A Y Glikson, E A Manwaring, F J Moss, E C E Sedmik, J Van Son, G A Young (1972) Gosses Bluff impact structure, Australia, Science 175(4027), p. 1199-1207, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC, url, doi:10.1126/science.175.4027.1199

A R Brown (1973) A detailed seismic study of Gosses Bluff, Northern Territory, Report - Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics 163, p. 1-42, Australian Geological Survey Organisation, Canberra, A.C.T., url

D J Milton (1979) Impact craters of Australia, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics - XVII General Assembly Abstracts., p. 1-211

V L Masaytis, A N Danilin, M S Mashchak, A I Raykhlin, T V Selivanovskaya, Y M Shadenkov (1980) The principal features of the geology of some astroblemes in foreign countries; Mesozoic astroblemes; the Gosses Bluff astrobleme, The geology of astroblemes, Izd. Nedra, Leningrad

C A Wood, C Dailey, W Daley, G Wells (1984) Searching for impact craters using space shuttle photography, Lunar and Planetary Institute The 47th Ann. Meteoritical Soc. Meeting 1 p (SEE N85-15599 06-91); United States, p. R-5 (150), url

D J Milton, J F Sutter (1987) Revised age for the Gosses Bluff impact structure, Northern Territory, Australia, based on Ar-40/Ar-39 dating, Meteoritics 22(3), p. 281-289, Arizona State University, Center for Meteorite Studies, Tempe, AZ, pdf

T Prinz (1996) Multispectral remote sensing of the Gosses Bluff impact crater, central Australia (N.T.) by using Landsat-TM and ERS-1 data, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 51(3), p. 137-149, Elsevier, Amsterdam, url

D J Milton, B C Barlow, A R Brown, F J Moss, E A Manwaring, E C E Sedmik, G A Young, J Van Son (1996) Gosses Bluff: A latest Jurassic impact structure, central Australia. Part 2: Seismic, magnetic, and gravity studies, AGSO Journal of Australian Geology and Geophysics 16(4), Andrew Y Glikson (ed.), p. 487-527, Australian Geological Survey Organisation, Canberra, A.C.T., url

P R Tingate, J F Lindsay, S J Marshallsea (1996) Impact structures as potential petroleum exploration targets: Gosses Bluff, a Late Jurassic example in central Australia, AGSO Journal of Australian Geology and Geophysics 16(4), Andrew Y Glikson (ed.), p. 529-552, Australian Geological Survey Organisation, Canberra, A.C.T., url

J D Gorter, R J Korsch, R S Nicoll (1996) Thermal history of the Gosses Bluff impact structure, central Australia, from conodont colour-alteration indices: Implications for hydrocarbon prospectivity and erosional history, AGSO Journal of Australian Geology and Geophysics 16(4), Andrew Y Glikson (ed.), p. 553-560, Australian Geological Survey Organisation, Canberra, A.C.T., url

D J Milton, A Y Glikson, R Brett (1996) Gosses Bluff: A latest Jurassic impact structure, central Australia. Part 1: Geological structure, stratigraphy, and origin, AGSO Journal of Australian Geology and Geophysics 16(4), Andrew Y Glikson (ed.), p. 453-486, Australian Geological Survey Organisation, Canberra, A.C.T., url

T H McElvain, A Read, M Petersen, W E Elston, H Newsom, B A Cohen (2006) Possible impact structure in the Sangre de Cristo mountains near Santa Fe, New Mexico: A preliminary report, Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America 38(7), p. 298-299, Geological Society of America (GSA), Boulder, CO, url