Traverse to the Elephant Moraine - Elephant Moraine Icefield Meteorite Listing
Elephant Moraine is an unusual, isolated surficial moraine not associated with exposed bedrock and lying along an escarpment running westward from Reckling Peak (ALH-DAV-Figure 1 - 45 KB JPEG). From the air it appears to resemble an elephant with a huge trunk. Bare ice areas surround the moraine. In the vicinity of the moraine, upwards of 50 square kilometers of ice is exposed. Elephant Moraine consists of a thin veneer of rocks lying on ice. The moraine tails out toward the north, normal to the escarpment, indicating ice flow toward the David Glacier (EET-Figure 1- 38 KB JPEG). EET6-Figure 1 (66 KB JPEG) is a vertical air photo of the Elephant Moraine and the ice surrounding it. . Elephant Moraine and the similar Reckling Moraine have been the focus of studies by Faure and coworkers (Faure and Taylor, 1985; Faure et al., 1987).
Ten meteorites were collected on a reconnaissance visit to Elephant Moraine in the 1979-1980 field season, including EET 79001, a very important Martian meteorite (Cassidy, 1980). A brief period during the 1982-1983 season (Cassidy et al., 1983) was spent in systematic searching. Virtually the entire bare ice area was systematically searched or visited on a reconnaissance basis during the 1983-1984 season (Cassidy and Schutt, 1984). Small collections were made in the 1984-1985 and 1986-1987 seasons by the parties studying the moraine. During the 1987-1988 season the area around the moraine was again visited and 35 meteorites were recovered from the area covered by the Elephant Moraine - Elephant Moraine Icefield area (Huss et al., 1988). A brief visit by an ANSMET team during the 1996-1997 program resulted in the recovery of an additional 7 specimens (Harvey and Schutt, 1997).
During a three week period at the end of the 1999-2000 season another 59 specimens were recovered from the ice around the Elephant Moraine. A group from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University were testing a meteorite hunting robot called NOMAD (Apostolopoulos et al., 2000). While tests were being conducted, time was spent searching the ice around and along the edges of the moraine. The robot was successful at distinguishing previously discovered meteorite specimens from terrestrial rocks.
EET6-Table 1 gives a tabulation of the meteorite types from the Elephant Moraine Icefield.
The locations of meteorites found on the 1979-1980 reconnaissance trip were approximately plotted on aerial photographs. The locations of meteorites found in succeeding seasons were determined by a variety of surveying methods. Thus, only the relative positions of meteorites found within a given season can be shown accurately. A theodolite and EDM were used to establish precise control positions of the 110, 115, and Elephant stations relative to the TRANSIT satellite-surveyed Dr. Seuss base station. During the 1999-2000 season most of the control stations and all of the meteorites were surveyed using differential GPS.
Acknowledgments; We thank ANSMET members John Annexstad, Lee Benda, William Cassidy, and Louis Rancitelli (1979-1980); Bill Cassidy, Vagn Buchwald, Tony Meunier, and Carl Thompson (1982-1983); William Cassidy, Robert Fudali, AC Hitch, Kunihiko Nishiizumi, Paul Pellas, Ludolf Schultz, John Schutt, and Paul Sipiera (1983-1984); Scott Sandford and John Schutt (1984-1985); Gary Huss, Carl Thompson, Jerry Wagstaff, and Peter Wasilewski (1987-1988); Guy Consolmagno, Ralph Harvey, Laurie Leshin, Rene Martinez, Sarah Russell, and John Schutt (1996-1997). The NOMAD team was directed by Dimitrios Apostolopoulos. Field team members consisted of Stewart Moorehead, Liam Pedersen, John Schutt, Kim Schillcutt, Ben Shamah, Michael Wagner. Thanks also to Gunter Faure and Karen Taylor for their assistance in 1984-1985 and David Buchanan, Gunter Faure, Eric Hagen, and Michael Strobel for their contribution to the Elephant Moraine meteorite collection in the 1986-1987 season. Tony Meunier provided the satellite postioning data.
Traverse to the Elephant Moraine - Elephant Moraine Icefield Meteorite Listing
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