Title
The Colônia structure, São Paulo, Brazil
Date Issued
01 November 2011
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Research Institute Development
Abstract
The near-circular Colônia structure, located in the southern suburbs of the mega-city of São Paulo, Brazil, has attracted the attention of geoscientists for several decades due to its anomalous character and the complete absence of any plausible endogenous geologic explanation for its formation. Origin by impact cratering has been suggested repeatedly since the 1960s, but no direct evidence for this has been presented to date. New seismic data have been recently acquired at Colônia, providing new insights into the characteristics and possible layering of infill of the structure, as well as into the depth to the underlying basement. We review the current knowledge about the Colônia structure, present the new seismic data, and discuss the existing-as yet still indirect-evidence for a possible origin by an impact. The new data suggest the existence of a sedimentary fill of approximately 275m thickness and also the presence of two intermediate zones between sediment and basement: an upper zone that is approximately 65m thick and can be interpreted as a possible crater-fill breccia, whereas the other zone possibly represents fractured/brecciated basement, with a thickness of approximately 50m. Although this depth to basement seems to be inconsistent with the expected geometry of a simple, bowl-shape impact structure of such diameter, there are a number of still unconstrained parameters that could explain this, such as projectile nature, size and velocity, impact angle, and particularly the current erosion depth. © The Meteoritical Society, 2011.
Start page
1630
End page
1639
Volume
46
Issue
11
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Meteorología y ciencias atmosféricas
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-80155122732
Source
Meteoritics and Planetary Science
ISSN of the container
10869379
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus