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Steinheim Meteor Crater -Miocene Lake Fossils


June P

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Hi, 

I am new here. I am an American stationed in Germany. I went to the Steinheim [am Albuch] meteor crater in Baden Wurttenberg, Germany yesterday. I was digging in the municipal sandpit for fossils and found some great little sand snails and a few other worm looking fossils. The area was struck by a meteor 14.5-15 million years ago. A crater approximately 3.8 kilometers in diameter formed with a central uplift. Water filled the crater and life flourished there. I was able to locate hundreds of tiny land snail fossils and sandstone containing more. I also found a few odd pieces of sandstone that I think are concretions, which also contain snails. An interesting feature of the hill at the central uplift of the crater is a piece of fossilized algae reef. Going to try to attach my photos.

can anyone look at my little worm like fossils and verify that these are little worms? Thanks in advance!

58B013D9-B1B6-455D-9BA0-DFB2F303F77A.jpeg

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Welcome to the Forum:)
Your site sounds most interesting!

I think it is possible that these are Spirorbis, a genus of polychaete worms.

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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I think Spirorbis is a good possibility. 

Hello, and a very warm welcome to TFF from Morocco. :)

Very interesting.

Thanks for sharing. :)

Life's Good!

Tortoise Friend.

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6 minutes ago, jpc said:

I think Spirorbis is a marine critter.  The Miocene of Steinheim is freshwater.  

Good point. :doh!:

Life's Good!

Tortoise Friend.

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38 minutes ago, jpc said:

Spirorbis is a marine critter

Make that a genus of mollusk:

There is this snail... LINK

 

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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Thank you for the welcome!

Yes, the Steinheim crater was a fresh water lake. It can be deceiving as they look like plant matter. When I took a closer look with my magnifying lens, i saw a little hole down the length of each of the fossils. The fossils are about 1 millimeter  to 3 millimeters in width. Some may be a little larger.

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Interesting post. My local area also had a meteor impact. The depression filled with water and a unique group of organisms formed local only to the crater. Now the city of Decorah sits on top of it.

 

Mar. 5, 2013 at 2:45PM

Geological survey: Ancient meteorite crater sits below Decorah

City built atop just 180 known impact craters on Earth

Looking due north, this 3-D view of Decorah and the Upper Iowa River shows the impact area of a meteorite that crashed into the area mearly half a billion years ago. (Credit: Adam Kiel graphic/Northeast Iowa RC&D) Looking due north, this 3-D view of Decorah and the Upper Iowa River shows the impact area of a meteorite that crashed into the area mearly half a billion years ago. (Credit: Adam Kiel graphic/Northeast Iowa RC&D)
 
 

 

Recent aerial surveys in the Decorah area have confirmed that a huge meteorite crashed into the earth there about 470 million years ago.

“Yeah, we have a very high confidence level” that a meteorite about 200 meters across struck there, said Robert McKay, a geologist with the Iowa Geological and Water Survey, which is partnering with the U.S. Geological Survey in the scientific study.

“I would say it is a pretty big scientific discovery,” said Paul Bedrosian, a USGS geophysicist in Denver, Colo., who is leading the effort to model the recently acquired geophysical data.

Only 183 meteor impact craters have been documented worldwide, according to an international database at the University of New Brunswick.

No evidence of the giant underground crater – more than 3 miles in diameter -- is visible to anyone studying the area through satellite images, aerial photos or even from a lofty vantage, said McKay, who pieced together several disparate clues to nail down the discovery.

The shale formation that led to the discovery pokes through the earth’s surface at only one known location, he said.

McKay credits the late Jean Young, a Decorah-area independent geologist who died in 2007, with finding the first clue.

“She called to my attention in 2000 an unusual cluster of well boring samples containing thick layers of shale, all from a confined area in and immediately around Decorah,” McKay said.

When McKay plotted them on a map, they described a circular basin 3.5 miles wide overlaying the city of Decorah.

Beneath the shale, formed when an ancient sea deposited sediment in the crater, was another layer of material unique to that particular spot, a substance McKay suspected was shocked quartz, shattered crystals often associated with meteorite impact structures.

McKay sent photos and samples to Bevan French, a scientist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, who subsequently identified shocked quartz -- considered near definitive evidence of an extra-terrestrial impact - in the samples.

Finally, the recent aerial survey, which collected electromagnetic and rock density information, has yielded data consistent with the existence of the crater hidden beneath Decorah.

Bedrosian said “the one-to-one correspondence of data collected in completely independent studies provides pretty definitive evidence” of an extraterrestrial impact.

The energy released in that long-ago collision, he said, would have been equivalent to the explosion of a bomb rated at more than 1,000 megatons of TNT. That compares with the 57-megaton rating of the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated and the estimated 10 megatons of force generated by the meteor that exploded over Russia last month.

Bedrosian said the survey is part of a larger USGS effort to evaluate the concealed mineral resource potential of the greater Midcontinent Rift region that formed about 1.1 billion years ago.

The recent flights, he said, targeted the Northeast Iowa Igneous Intrusive complex, which geologists suspect may be similar to an area of northern Minnesota known for deposits of copper, nickel and platinum.

While more analysis will be required to determine the mineral potential, the study has unearthed a valuable finding about the area’s water resources, McKay said.

“We found that the presumed impact shattered the Jordan sandstone layer, disrupting the Jordan aquifer in that locale,” he said.

That means, for example, that if the city of Decorah wanted to supplement its shallow alluvial wells with a deeper source of water, drilling beyond the crater boundaries would be advised, he said.

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Oh this us awesome! 

I will definitely look it up. Would love to see more craters and find awesome fossils everywhere!!!!

i visited the Ries crater last year. That one is 26 kilometers in diameter. I have a fossil  shocked Belemnite from the Ries crater!!!!

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@June P, If you found this interesting, here are the creatures that formed inside this body of water:

 

 

Fossilized Human-Sized Sea Scorpion Found In Meteorite Crater

If you sea scorpion, say scorpion

By Mary Beth Griggs September 1, 2015
 
 
Sea Scorpion

Sea Scorpion

Illustration of Pentecopterus decorahensis

Patrick Lynch

If you think scorpions are scary today, be very glad that you weren't around 467 million years ago. Today, these stealthy stingers are found on land, but back then, scorpion ancestors ruled the seas.

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Yikes! oh my! Can you imagine what the world was like back then? Creepy and terrifying!!! Sea scorpions...no thanks!

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Huh!  I hear that about a lot of dangerous things.  The only danger is getting caught without salt, pepper, and ketchup.

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