Karla - Hypervelocity Impact Crater

Alternate Names
Local Language
Coordinates 54° 55' 0" N; 48° 1' 60" E
Notes
  1. The basin of the Sviyaga River, a tributary of the Volga.
Country Russia
Region Tatarstan
Date Confirmed 1976
Notes
  1. Shatter cones present in limestone and in fragments of carbonate rock (Masaitis et al., 1976).
Buried? No
Notes
  1. Breccia is unconformably overlain by a roughly 100 m thick Pliocene unit of calcareous clays (Masaitis et al., 1980).
Drilled? Yes
Notes
  1. 5 drill holes penetrated the sedimentary cover and filling complex, breccias and fractured sedimentary base complex (Masaitis et al., 1980).
Target Type Sedimentary
Notes
  1. Carboniferous carbonates, Permian gypsums, carbonates and sandstones, Jurassic sands and clays, Cretaceous clays (Masaitis et al., 1980).
Sub-Type Carbonate, Claystone, Gypsum, Sandstone
Apparent Crater Diameter (km) 12 km
Age (Ma) 4 - 6
Notes :
  1. The filling complex is Pliocene, suggesting a Late Miocene or Early Pliocene formation age (Masaitis et al., 1980) (Masaitis, 1999).

Method :
  1. Stratigraphy
Impactor Type Unknown

Advanced Data Fields

Notes

Erosion
5
  1. The ejecta and rim are eroded; the crater-fill products are preserved (Grieve, 1982).
Final Rim Diameter
Unknown
Apparent Rim Diameter
12 km
  1. Dimensions from diagram in (Masaitis et al., 1980).
Rim Reliability Index
4
  1. Carboniferous limestone at the centre of the structure forms the uplift. A circular basin is filled with Pliocene sediments and Quaternary sands (Masaitis et al., 1980). Uplift is 600 x 800 m across.
Crater Morphology
Complex
Central Uplift Diameter
0.8km
Central Uplift Height
350 m
Uplift Reliability Index
4
Structural Uplift
350 m
Thickness of Seds
Target Age
Palaeozoic Mesozoic
Marine
No
Impactor Type
Other Shock Metamorphism
No
Shatter Cones
Yes
  1. Shatter cones occur in limestone (Masaitis et al., 1976) (a macrophotograph of a shatter cone is illustrated). Shatter cones occur in fragments of carbonate rocks (i.e., limestone) (Masaitis, 1999).
Planar Fractures
No
Planar Deformation Features
No
Diaplectic Glass
No
Coesite
No
Stisovite
No
Crater Fill
LB
  1. Crater-fill breccias and breccia dykes in central uplift reported by (Masaitis, 1999). Impact ejecta preserved in the northeast.
Proximal Ejecta
LB
Distal Ejecta
Dykes
LB
Volume of Melt
Depth of Melting

References

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V L Masaitis, A N Danilin, G M Karpov, A I Raikhlin (1976) Karla, Obolon' and Rotmistrovka astroblemes in the European part of the USSR, Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR 230, p. 174-177

L P Khryanina, O P Ivanov (1977) Structure of meteorite craters and astroblemes, Doklady. Earth Science Sections 233(1-6), p. 76-79, Scripta Publishing, Silver Spring, MD

V L Masaitis, M S Mashchak, A I Raykhlin, T V Selivanovskaya, A N Danilin (1978) Meteorite craters and astroblemes of the USSR, Doklady. Earth Science Sections 240(1-6), p. 91-93, Scripta Publishing, Silver Spring, MD, 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

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

Dilyara. M. Kuzina, Jérôme. Gattacceca, Natalia. S. Bezaeva, Dmitry. D. Badyukov, Pierre. Rochette, Yoann. Quesnel, François. Demory, Daniel. Borschneck (2022) Paleomagnetic study of impactites from the Karla impact structure suggests protracted postimpact hydrothermalism, Meteoritics and Planetary Science, University of Arkansa, doi:10.1111/maps.13906