Statistical properties of the Transantarctic Mountains (TAM) micrometeorite collection |
| |
| Authors: | Clment Suavet Pierre Rochette Myriam Kars Jrme Gattacceca Luigi Folco Ralph P Harvey |
| |
| Institution: | aCEREGE, Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS; Europôle Méditerranéen de l'Arbois, PB-80, 13545 Aix-en-Provence cedex 04, France;bMuseo Nazionale dell'Antartide, Università di Siena, Siena, Italy;cDepartment of Geological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA |
| |
| Abstract: | Micrometeorites have been recovered from traps located at the summit of nunataks in the Transantarctic Mountains (TAM), Antarctica. They constitute the TAM micrometeorite collection. Micrometeorites accumulated by direct infall for hundreds of thousands of years. This long collection duration is confirmed by the wide range of weathering by dissolution of olivine in the stony micrometeorites from the TAM collection. A statistical study of the size distribution and frequency by type of this collection, and comparison with other Antarctic micrometeorite collections (the South Pole Water Well collection and the Walcott Névé collection), suggest that the TAM collection is essentially unbiased. Thanks to the very long exposure of the traps, large diameter (>1000 μm) micrometeorites are present in sufficiently large numbers to allow a statistically meaningful estimate of their size distribution in this size range for the first time. We found that the slope of the size distribution remains constant in the 100–1600 μm size range. Therefore, the size distribution of micrometeorites in this size range is controlled by a single process. |
| |
| Keywords: | Antarctica Micrometeorites Size distribution Weathering |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
