Serpent Mound - Hypervelocity Impact Crater

Alternate Names Serpent Mound Disturbance
Local Language
Coordinates 39° 2' 3" N; 83° 24' 20" W
Notes
  1. SE Ohio, approximately 110 km E of Cincinnati.
Country United States of America
Region Ohio
Date Confirmed 1998
Notes
  1. Shatter cones and PDFs in quartz found (Carlton et al., 1998).
Buried? No
Notes
  1. Very sparsely covered by Quaternary Alluvium (Heyl and Brok, 1962).
Drilled? Yes
Notes
  1. 2 small cores drilled in 1970s in central uplift to a depth of 903 and 629 m (Hansen, 1994; Koeberl et al., 1998).
Target Type Sedimentary
Notes
  1. Ordovician to Mississippian mudstone (Reidel, 1981).
Sub-Type Carbonate, Mudstone, Sandstone, Shale
Apparent Crater Diameter (km) 8 km
Age (Ma) <359
Notes :
  1. <359 Ma based on stratigraphic age constraints (Tournaisian, Early Mississippian, Cuyahoga formation, or younger) (Bucher, 1936) (Reidel and Koucky, 1981). A stratigraphic age of <320 Ma was initially provided by (Reidel, 1972). The crater is very sparsely covered by Quaternary Alluvium (Heyl and Brok, 1962). *Minimum age is poorly constrained and is estimated based on erosion.

Method :
  1. Stratigraphy
Impactor Type Unknown

Advanced Data Fields

Notes

Erosion
7
  1. Extensive erosion has removed the crater floor and exposed the substructure. (Reidel, 1972).
Final Rim Diameter
Unknown
Apparent Rim Diameter
8 km
  1. The circular structure is ~8 km in diameter (Carlton et al. 1998). (Reidel, 1981)
Rim Reliability Index
1
  1. Consists of a central uplift, an intermediate transition area of radiating faults and folds and an outer ring graben (Reidel, 1981).
Crater Morphology
Complex
Central Uplift Diameter
3.2km
Central Uplift Height
Unknown
Uplift Reliability Index
4
Structural Uplift
300 m
Thickness of Seds
Target Age
Palaeozoic
Marine
No
Impactor Type
Other Shock Metamorphism
No
Shatter Cones
Yes
  1. Shatter cones in the central uplift and more rarely in peripheral depression in Greenfield Peebles Dolomite (Dietz, 1960) (Reidel, 1972).
Planar Fractures
No
Planar Deformation Features
Yes
  1. (Koeberl et al., 1998)
Diaplectic Glass
No
Coesite
No
  1. Thought coesite but found in dolomite limestone shatter cone, thus, more likely barite.
Stisovite
No
Crater Fill
LB, MB
  1. Polymict lithic breccias as crater-fill and dikes are reported by (Carlton et al., 1998) (Koeberl et al., 1998). Black aphanitic clasts are believed to represent altered glass, however, it is not confirmed (Carlton et al., 1998).
Proximal Ejecta
Distal Ejecta
Dykes
LB
Volume of Melt
Depth of Melting

References

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W H Bucher (1936) Cryptovolcanic structures in the United States, Report of the ... Session - International Geological Congress 2(62), p. 1055-1084, International Geological Congress, [location varies], url

L W Sappenfield (1950) A magnetic survey of the Adams County cryptovolcanic structure, Unpublished Master's Thesis, University of Cincinnati, Ohio, p. 27, url

R S Dietz (1960) Meteorite impact suggested by shatter cones in rock, Science 131(3416), p. 1781-1784, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC, url

R G Schmidt, A C McFarlan, E Nosow, R S Bowman, R Alberts (1961) Examination of Ordovician through Devonian stratigraphy and the Serpent Mound chaotic structure area, Field trip 8, p. 259-293

A V Heyl, M R Brock (1962) Zinc occurrence in the Serpent Mound structure of southern Ohio, U. S. Geological Survey Professional Paper, p. D95-D97, U. S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA, url

R W Batsche (1963) Field study and geological interpretation of a gravity anomaly located in the Fayette County, Ohio area, Master's Thesis, Ohio State University, Columbus, url

C Bull, C E Corbato, J C Zahn (1965) A gravity survey of the Serpent Mound area in southern Ohio, The Ohio State University, url

S P Reidel (1975) Bedrock geology of the Serpent Mound cryptoexplosion structure, Adams, Highland, and Pike Counties, Ohio, Report of Investigations - Ohio, Division of Geological Survey, p. 1 sheet, Ohio Division of Geological Survey, Columbus, OH, url

S P Reidel (1975) The geology of the Serpent Mound cryptoexplosion structure, M.Sc. Thesis, University of Cincinnati, Ohio, p. 150, url

G V Skrynnik (1977) Meteorite craters on Earth, Astronomicheskii Vestnik 11, p. 198-208, url

S P Reidel (1981) The Serpent Mound disturbance, south-central Ohio; an example of hydrotectonics?, Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 62(45), American Geophysical Union, Washington, DC, url

R A F Grieve (1982) The record of impact on Earth: Implications for a major Cretaceous/Tertiary impact event, Geological Society of America 190(Special Paper), p. 25-37, url

S P Reidel, F L Koucky, J R Stryker (1982) The Serpent Mound disturbance, southwestern Ohio, American Journal of Science 282(9), p. 1343-1377, Kline Geology Laboratory, Yale University, New Haven, CT, url

Y P Gurov, Y P Gurova (1987) Impact structures on the Earth's surface, Geologicheskiy Zhurnal 47(1), p. 117-124, Naukova Dumka, Kiev, url

S P Reidel (1988) Geologic map of the Saddle Mountains, south-central Washington, Geologic Map (Olympia) 38, p. 28-28, 5 sheets, Washington Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geology and Earth Resources, Olympia, WA, url

L W D Bridges (1997) Ames depression, Oklahoma: Domal collapse and later subsurface solution, Oklahoma Geological Survey Circular 100, p. 153-168

C Koeberl, Paul C Buchanan, R W Carlton (1998) Petrography and geochemistry of drill core samples from the Serpent Mound structure, Ohio; confirmation of impact origin, Abstracts of Papers Submitted to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 29, p. 1392, Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Houston, TX, url

R W Carlton, C Koeberl, M T Baranoski, G A Schumacher (1998) Discovery of microscopic evidence for shock metamorphism at the Serpent Mound structure, south-central Ohio: confirmation of an origin by impact, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 162, p. 177-185, url

M T Baranoski, D R Watts (2001) The Serpent Mound disturbance of southern Ohio; a structurally complex impact site with hydrocarbon potential from the Ordovician and Cambrian system reservoirs, AAPG Bulletin 85(8), p. 1530, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Tulsa, OK, url

A Schedl (2006) Applications of twin analysis to studying meteorite impact structures, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 244(3-4), p. 530-540, Elsevier, Amsterdam, url, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2006.02.018

Keith A. Milam, Adam Hester, Peter Malinski (2010) An anomalous breccia associated with the serpent mound impact crater, southern Ohio, Ohio Journal of Science 110(2)

Keith A. Milam (2010) A revised diameter for the serpent mound impact crater in southern Ohio, Ohio Journal of Science 110(3)

D S Vanadia (2017) Mapping the outer margin of the Serpent Mound impact structure to assess the outer limit of deformation: Adams, Highland, and Pike Counties, Ohio, p. 92, url

E Flamini, A Coletta, M L Battagliere, M Virelli (2019) Serpent Mound, USA, Encyclopedic Atlas of Terrestrial Impact Craters, p. 605-607, Springer, Cham, url, doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05451-9_168

L P Jacobs (2020) Mapping the central uplift of the Serpent Mound impact structure; Implications for crater diameter and timing of the event, Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, p. 2962, url

E N Simpson (2021) A comparison of potentially impact-related diagenesis in impact structures with carbonate targets, p. 71, url