Microtektites from the northern Victoria Land Transantarctic Mountains: Evidence for a new strewn field generated by a catastrophic impact on Earth

Summary Tektites are natural silicate glasses produced by the melting associated with hypervelocity impacts of extraterrestrial bodies on Earth. They are found only in certain areas of the Earth known as strewn fields, the material being mostly projected melt from target rocks at the site of impact. Microtektites are distal ejecta which are found up to several thousands km from their source crater. Microtektite strewn fields documented in literature include the North American (35 Ma), Ivory Coast (1.1 Ma) and Australasian (0.8 Ma). We report here on the discovery of microtektites from several summit plateaus (~2700 m) of the Transantarctic Mountains in northern Victoria Land. They have a Late Miocene 40Ar/39Ar age and identify a new microtektite strewn field associated with an impact crater yet to be located. This finding has important implications for both the collisional history of our planet and for the denudation history of the Antarctic bedrock