Was the Tunguska 1908 event a late byproduct of a Permo-Triassic Verneshot?
Abstract
The Tunguska region is covered by ~1500 m of Siberian Traps basalts. The 1908 Tunguska event occurred in the Tunguska Great Depression which is part of a volcanic edifice, the Khushminskii Volcano, whose age is contemporaneous to the emplacement of the traps, i.e. about 250 Ma at the Permo-Triassic or Paleozoic/Mesozoic boundary. The Tunguska Great Depression is elliptical with a major axis of about 13 km. It has a crater-like morphology, with a central edifice, Mount Stojkovic (about 500 m) rising 200 m above the rest of the central swamp. Mount Stojkovic is also at the 1908 Tunguska event epicenter calculated from treefall patterns. Outcrops at the summit of Mount Stojkovic expose quartzites and siliceous diamicrites. Other outcrops of quartzites are found a few km to the west of Mount Stojkovic. These sedimentary rocks are Permian fluvial deposits sedimented on the Siberian Craton before the eruption of the traps, and are now associated with volcanic pipes which cut through the trap basalts. Analysis of these quartzite samples reveals that they have been affected by shock metamorphism, as was first described by Hryanina (LPSC Abstracts, 1999). We were able to identify shocked quartz, toasted quartz, brecciated quartz crystals, pseudotachylites and rapid partial melting with spiky outgrowths of quartz and feldspars. The cause of the Tunguska 1908 event remains controversial. The main controversy is due to the fact that neither an obvious large impact crater nor any obvious extraterrestrial material has been found at this site; so that the extraterrestrial body is imagined to have exploded/vaporized about 8-10 km above the Earth’s surface. Such an air explosion could have not produced shock metamorphism. The recently proposed minor impact crater, lake Cheko, about 8 km NW of Mt. Stojkovic, still has trees in upright positions on its lakebed, so shock metamorphism would also be out of question here even if this were to be imagined as an impact-linked feature. At the same time, the probability that two extraterrestrial bodies would fall on the same point on Earth is 1 in 10,000 chance. Our preferred hypothesis is that the Siberian Traps, the Khushminskii volcano, the shock metamorphism and the Tunguska event are all linked together, and all caused by a terrestrial process related to hyperexplosive gas release from >50km depths in the Siberian Craton.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AGUFM.V13C2371V
- Keywords:
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- 3625 MINERALOGY AND PETROLOGY / Petrography;
- microstructures;
- and textures;
- 3660 MINERALOGY AND PETROLOGY / Metamorphic petrology;
- 8428 VOLCANOLOGY / Explosive volcanism