Organic carbon from the Hiawatha impact crater, North-West Greenland Adam A. Garde1, Svend Funder2, Carsten Guvad1, Kurt H. Kjær2, Nicolaj Krog Larsen3, Jette Dahl-Møller4, Gernot Nehrke5, Hamed Sanei3, Anne Sofie Søndergaard3 and Christian Weikusat5. 1Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), Denmark,
[email protected], 2Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 3Department of Geosience, Aarhus University, Denmark, 4Geobiology and Minerals Section, Natural History Museum, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 5Alfred Wegener Institute, Bremerhaven, Germany. 20 cm Subfossil, un-charred, ~2.5 Ma old tree trunks up to 2 m long, Gymnosperm subfossil wood Heated carbonaceous particle Microbreccia with carbon in matrix Impact glass showing expulsion Sampling glaciofluvial sand recently washed out from under the ice sheet in adjacent Washington Land from impacted subglacial source of carbon around micro-orbicules washed out from the Hiawatha crater Glaciofluvial The Hiawatha impact crater Objectives and conclusions impactite grains A 77°30’N 80°W 70°W 60°W B • The newly discovered Hiawatha crater has a highly unusual organic carbon content in shock melt glasses, microbreccias, and around shocked quartz grains. Only few Shocked quartz fragment with other impact structures contain appreciable organic carbon (e.g. Gardnos, Haughton, planar deformation Darwin, Popigai, see references). features (PDFs) Washington Land HW21-2016 • Dispersed organic carbon was incorporated in microbreccias and shock melts. Kane Basin Active drainage path 79°N Nares Strait 77°30’N B Humboldt • Solid organic carbon was heated, depleated and homogenised to form particles Inglefield Land glacier with high reflectance (R = 1.0–3.5). Smith Sound Ice margin 0 Hiawatha Kap glacier København Qtz PDFs WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF THIS CARBON AND WHAT CAN IT TELL US? Shocked quartz with Greenland 750 m Ice Sheet Height PDFs and partially Thule • The obvious carbon source is subfossil wood, known from adjacent above Air Ba se melted feldspar.