Atacama desert glass is an
impactite found in the
Atacama Desert in
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
. The event was approximately 12000 years ago; traces of
chondrite
A chondrite is a stony (non-metallic) meteorite that has not been modified, by either melting or differentiation of the parent body. They are formed when various types of dust and small grains in the early Solar System accreted to form primi ...
s suggest a
cometary impact.
Widespread glasses were generated by cometary fireballs during the
late Pleistocene
The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of ...
in the Atacama Desert, Chile.
See also
*
*
References
* Peter H. Schultz, R. Scott Harris, Sebastián Perroud, Nicolas Blanco, Andrew J. Tomlinson; Geology 2021; doi: https://doi.org/10.1130/G49426.1
* https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/doi/10.1130/G49426.1/609354/Widespread-glasses-generated-by-cometary-fireballs
Glass in nature
Impact event minerals
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