Coring the Chesapeake Bay impact crater
Geotimes
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Abstract
In July 1983, the shipboard scientists of Deep Sea Drilling Project Leg 95 found an unexpected bonus in a core taken 150 kilometers east of Atlantic City, N.J. At Site 612, the scientists recovered a 10-centimeter-thick layer of late Eocene debris ejected from an impact about 36 million years ago. Microfossils and argon isotope ratios from the same layer reveal that the ejecta were part of a broad North American impact debris field, previously known primarily from the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. Since that serendipitous beginning, years of seismic reflection profiling, gravity measurements and core drilling have confirmed the source of that strewn field - the Chesapeake Bay impact crater, the largest structure of its kind in the United States, and the sixth-largest impact crater on Earth.
Suggested Citation
Poag, C.W., 2004, Coring the Chesapeake Bay impact crater: Geotimes, v. 49, no. 1, p. 22-25.
Study Area
| Publication type | Article |
|---|---|
| Publication Subtype | Journal Article |
| Title | Coring the Chesapeake Bay impact crater |
| Series title | Geotimes |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Year Published | 2004 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | American Geological Institute |
| Contributing office(s) | Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center |
| Description | 4 p. |
| First page | 22 |
| Last page | 25 |
| Country | United States |
| Other Geospatial | Chesapeake Bay area |