Citation
Xie, Z., Wang, H., Qian, H., Jiang, S., Huang, Z., Shi, G., … & Decarli, P. S. (2010). New impact evidences discovered in the vicinity of tai lake, southeast china: indicating a unique impact crater. Meteoritics and Planetary Science Supplement, 73, 5439.
Introduction
The impact origin of Taihu lake was proposed twenty years ago based on the deformation features of quartz in Devonian sandstone, which were collected from rock outcrops in islands of Taihu lake. However the impact origin hypothesis was not confirmed because the lack of sufficient evidence, and the inability to explain how a 65 km diameter crater could be so shallow. Here we report new evidence of shock: Impact breccia, shocked basement rock, impact ejecta.
Results: Ejecta were discovered first and revive the impact origin hypothesis [3, 4 abstract of this meeting], and indicate an impact event of less than ten thousand years. Breccia found in other side of Tai Lake is described in another abstract of this meeting. The image below shows the shattered quartz fragments in base rock of sandstone near the edge of Tai Lake.
