The Carancas crater and the meteorite fall: The first recirded impact on Earth.

TANCREDI G,; ISHITSUKA J,; SCHULTZ P,; R S, HARRIS; BROWN P,; REVELLE D,; ANTIER K,; PICHON A, LE; ROSALES D,; VIDAL E,; PAVEL D,; DALMAU A,; BENAVENTE S,; MIRANDA P,; PEREIRA G,; MARIA EUGENIA VARELA; SÁNCHEZ L,

Maryland

Congreso; Asteriods, Comets , Meteors; 2008

close to noon local time, a bright fireball was observed and heard in the southern shore of the Lake Titicaca, close to the border between Peru and Bolivia. Many peas-ants and residents of several towns observed the fire-ball from East to West. The peasants of the Commu-nity of Carancas, that were watching out their llamas and alpacas, heard a big explosion and observed the formation of a mushroom cloud. Minutes after they found a ~15m hole in the terrain, half filled by under-ground water, and a lot of dispersed blocks of soils of sizes over a meter. Some pieces of a grayish material were found, clearly distinct from the sedimentary rocks of the terrain. The walls of the crater showed a gray powder spread everywhere. In a preliminary analysis to the collected material, we found the pres-ence of chondrules in the grayish material and we ob-served that the dispersed blocks showed an ejecta pat-tern. It is the first time in the recorded history that sev-eral persons witness the formation of an impact crater. An international and multidisciplinary group was cre-ated to study this interesting event.