Mount Toondina - Hypervelocity Impact Crater

Alternate Names
Local Language
Coordinates 27° 56' 40" S; 135° 21' 32" E
Notes
  1. 45 km S of the town of Oodnadatta in northern South Australia.
Country Australia
Region South Australia
Date Confirmed 1976
Notes
  1. Previously believed to be a salt diapir, Mount Toondina was later interpreted as an impact crater based on presence of PDFs in quartz (Youles, 1976).
Buried? Partially
Notes
  1. Ring structure is buried just below a thin veneer of Quaternary sediments (Plescia et al., 1994).
Drilled? No
Target Type Sedimentary
Notes
  1. Lower Permian Mount Toondina Formation, Algebuckina Sandsone of Jurassic age and fine sandstone and shale of Cretaceous age (Plescia et al., 1994).
Sub-Type Sandstone, Shale
Apparent Crater Diameter (km) 4 km
Age (Ma) <125
Notes :
  1. <125 Ma based on stratigraphic age constraints (Plescia et al., 1994). The ring structure is buried just below a thin veneer of Quaternary sediments (Plescia et al., 1994).

Method :
  1. Stratigraphy
Impactor Type Unknown

Advanced Data Fields

Notes

Erosion
6
  1. The original crater topography has been eroded away (Plescia et al., 1994).
Final Rim Diameter
Unknown
Apparent Rim Diameter
4 km
  1. Diameter of 4 km determined by gravity and seismic reflection data along with geologic mapping (Plescia et al., 1994).
Rim Reliability Index
1
  1. Mount Toondina is the remainder of the central uplift and the only feature exposed.
Crater Morphology
Complex
Central Uplift Diameter
1.2km
Central Uplift Height
Unknown
Uplift Reliability Index
3
Structural Uplift
200 m
Thickness of Seds
Target Age
Palaeozoic Mesozoic
Marine
No
Impactor Type
Other Shock Metamorphism
No
Shatter Cones
Yes
  1. Shatter cones occur (Shoemaker, pers. comm. to Grieve).
Planar Fractures
No
Planar Deformation Features
Yes
  1. PDF in quartz grains in sediments (Youles, 1976).
Diaplectic Glass
No
Coesite
No
Stisovite
No
Crater Fill
  1. Structure is deeply eroded. No information regarding impactites was found.
Proximal Ejecta
Distal Ejecta
Dykes
Volume of Melt
Depth of Melting

References

Spot a missing reference? Submit Reference

I B Freytag (1965) Mount Toondina Beds - Permian sediments in a probable piercement structure, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia 89, p. 61-76, Royal Society of South Australia, Adelaide, South Aust., url

I P Youles (1976) Mount Toondina impact structure, Quarterly Geological Notes - South Australia, Geological Survey(60), p. 10-12, Geological Survey of South Australia, [Parkside, Victoria], url

H Wopfner (1977) Mount Toondina; diapir or astrobleme, Quarterly Geological Notes - South Australia, Geological Survey(62), p. 21-24, Geological Survey of South Australia, [Parkside, Victoria], url

J B Plescia, E M Shoemaker, C S Shoemaker (1994) Gravity survey of the Mount Toondina impact structure, South Australia, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 99(E6), p. 13167-13179, url, doi:10.1029/94JE00660

J D Gorter (1998) The petroleum potential of Australian Phanerozoic impact structures, APPEA Journal 38(1), p. 159-187, Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, Canberra, A.C.T., url

P W Haines (2005) Impact cratering and distal ejecta: The Australian record, Australian Journal of Earth Sciences 52(4-5), p. 481-507, doi:10.1080/08120090500170351

J Plescia (2007) Understanding impact structures with gravity, Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America 39(6), p. 121, Geological Society of America (GSA), Boulder, CO, url

A Dressler (2012) A hydrogeophysical conceptual model of Mount Toondina impact crater, South Australia, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, p. Abstract H33G-1391, American Geophysical Union, Washington, DC, url

T Halihan, A Dressler, A Love, Y Xie, C T Simmons, J Byrnes (2012) Numerical and hydrogeophysical model of Mount Toondina impact crater, South Australia, Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America 44(7), p. 535, Geological Society of America (GSA), Boulder, CO, url

A Y Glikson, F Pirajno (2018) Australian impact structures >10 Km-large, Modern Approaches in Solid Earth Sciences 14, p. 79-122, Springer, Cham, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-74545-9_4

S Staffieri, A Coletta, M L Battagliere, M Virelli (2019) Mount Toondia, Australia, Encyclopedic Atlas of Terrestrial Impact Craters, p. 287-289, Springer, Cham, url, doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05451-9_74