Search

The high-pressure minerals of reidite and coesite have been identified in the moderately shock-metamorphosed gneiss (shock stage II, 3545GPa) and the strongly shock-metamorphosed gneiss (shock stage III, 4555GPa), respectively, from the polymict breccias of the Xiuyan crater, a simple impact structure 1.8km in diameter in China. Reidite in the shock stage II gneiss displays lamellar textures developed in parental grains of zircon. The phase transformation of zircon to reidite likely corresponds to a martensitic mechanism. No coesite is found in the reidite-bearing gneiss. The shock stage III gneiss contains abundant coesite, but no reidite is identified in the rock. Coesite occurs as acicular, dendritic, and spherulitic crystals characteristic of crystallization from shock-produced silica melt. Zircon in the rock is mostly recrystallized. The postshock temperature in the shock stage III gneiss is too high for the preservation of reidite, whereas reidite survives in the shock stage II gneiss because of relatively low postshock temperature. Reidite does not occur together with coesite because of difference in shock-induced temperature between the shock stage II gneiss and the shock stage III gneiss.

The 1.8 km-diameter Xiuyan crater is an impact structure in northeastern China, exposed in a Proterozoic metamorphic rock complex. The major rocks of the crater are composed of granulite, hornblendite, gneiss, tremolite marble, and marble. The bottom at the center of the crater covers about 100 m thick lacustrine sediments underlain by 188 m thick crater-fill breccia. A layer of polymict breccia composed of clasts of granulite, gneiss, hornblendite, and fragments of glass as well as clastic matrix, occurs near the base, in the depth interval from 260 to 295 m. An investigation in quartz from the polymict breccia in the crater-fill units reveals abundant planar deformation features (PDFs). Quartz with multiple sets of PDFs is found in clasts of granulite that consist of mainly quartz and feldspar, and in fine-grained matrix of the impact-produced polymict breccia. A universal stage was used to measure the orientation of PDFs in 70 grains of quartz from five thin sections made from the clasts of granulite of polymict breccia recovered at the depth of 290 m. Forty-four percent of the quartz grains contain three sets of PDFs, and another 40% contain two sets of PDFs. The most abundant PDFs are rhombohedron forms of pf10 12g, xf10 13g ,a ndr=zf10 11g with frequency of 33.5, 22.3, and 9.6%, respectively. A predominant PDF form of f10 12g in quartz suggests a shock pressure >20 GPa. The occurrence of PDFs in quartz from the polymict breccia provides crucial evidence for shock metamorphism of target rocks and confirms the impact origin of this crater, which thus appears to be the first confirmed impact crater in China.