THE CATSKILL GEOLOGISTS BY PROFESSORS ROBERT AND JOHANNA TITUS
An empty crater?
With a draft illustration by Karl Anshanslin.
We think that, in the next two columns, we will be bringing some bad news to many of you. They will center on one of the most interesting ideas that has ever emerged from the study of the geology of the Catskills – the hypothesis of the Panther Mountain asteroid impact. You have probably read about it, perhaps several times. We have written about it, also several times. Starting about half a century ago a New York State Museum geologist, Dr. Yngvar Isachsen, argued that about 375 million years ago, during the Devonian Period, an asteroid crashed out of the sky, hitting the vicinity that would later, much later, become Panther Mountain, right here in our Catskills. We knew Yngvar and liked him. We wrote about the impact and loved his hypothesis. It provided us, as popular science writers, with some very inspired storytelling. Do you have the fourth, expanded edition of our “The Catskills, a Geological Guide?” Turn to pages 133 to 135 and read our description of that event. That was a lot of fun writing and, for you, perhaps some fun reading. What a shame it is that it, alas, may not have actually happened.
We think that the story goes something like this: The asteroid, about a half mile across, smacked right into the great Devonian Catskill Delta that spread across our region back then. That would be like an asteroid striking today’s Ganges River Delta that makes up most of Bangladesh. It struck right where there would eventually be Panther Mountain, and it created a six-mile-wide crater. That crater, as you might guess, had an equally large rim. Over millions of years both the crater and its rim came to be buried by more than 2,600 feet of Catskill Delta sediments which all eventually hardened into all the sedimentary rock that you see whenever you are hiking up the slopes of Panther or any of the other Catskill mountains. That left the impact crater buried under thick sequences of rock and thus very much out of sight. So how could Dr, Isachsen even guess that it was there? As all this sediment piled up, it draped over that rim and fractures were generated. See our first illustration by Karl Anshanslin. Those fractures were quite densely spaced and radiated upward through the overlying bedrock. They shattered the bedrock above the circular crater rim, making it very subject to weathering and erosion. Esopus and Woodland Creeks followed these fractures and eroded a circular valley all around Panther Mountain. That process actually defines the mountain. See our second illustration. A circle like this is a very unusual pattern in our region; there are no others like it. It cried out for explanation and the asteroid impact hypothesis provided just that.
1st 2nd
Isachsen went on pursuing the evidence. The density of fragmented crustal materials just below craters tend to be low. That reduces the effect of gravity – just the least little bit. So Isachsen lugged a gravimeter across the mountain and found, indeed, that the rocks were of low density. He went on to find what he thought were impactites, iron rich droplets of rock thrown into the sky above an impact. Then he found what are called shocked quartz crystals. When an impact shock passes through quartz sand grains it deforms the clear transparent crystal structures in a very recognizable fashion.
All this seemed to add up to some pretty good science. It had to be because this sort of thing is always going to be controversial. And that it was. Would it, could it, and did it survive the inevitable attacks that would come. We will take this up next time.
Contact the authors at randjtitus@prodigy.net. Join their facebook page “The Catskill Geologist.” Read their blogs at “thecatskillgeologist.com.”
ADDITION & CORRECTION
In our last edition, we (me, Matt) made an error and accidentally cut off the end of the column by Professors Titus. It was my error and I apologize to you, the readers for depriving you of it and to Robert and Johanna for my oversight:
Follow the Science?
For the two of us these things sometimes strike close to home. Are you a young earth creationist? There are plenty of them. Well, sorry; we are both evolutionary biologists and several peer-reviewed articles about evolution, published in respectable science journals, have come out of our home. Do you believe in Noah’s Flood? If it actually happened, then most of the thousand columns we have published these past 33 years are false. Everything, and we mean everything we know about biology and geology, speaks clearly of a very old planet upon which life has slowly and steadily evolved. One large problem with the acceptance of science is that so many scientists are poor, to say the least, in communicating what they do. The two of us have done as well as we can along those lines.
So, what about the most recent loss of confidence, why is that? The answer is that science demonstrates the effectiveness’ of vaccines. We know - we know; all sorts of arguments have been made against vaccines. But the science of statistics is clear: vaccinated people, definitely including the two of us, are not as commonly sickened by the diseases that they have been vaccinated against. They are not as commonly hospitalized, and they do not die as commonly as unvaccinated people. If you insist upon not being vaccinated, then go ahead. The results? Darwin could have explained them better than we can.
Contact the authors at randjtitus@prodigy.net. Join their facebook page: “The Catskill Geologist.” Read their blogs at thecatskillgeologist.com.
Posts
