Mount Toondina crater

Template:Short description Template:Use Australian English Template:Infobox terrestrial impact site Mount Toondina crater is an impact structure (or astrobleme), the eroded remnant of a former impact crater, located in northern South Australia in the locality of Allandale Station about Template:Convert south of the town of Oodnadatta.<ref>Template:Cite Earth Impact DB</ref><ref name="LMV">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Mount Toondina is the high point of a circular topographic feature rising out of an otherwise relatively flat desert area of the Eromanga Basin. An impact origin was first suggested in 1976, challenging the earlier diapir (salt dome) hypothesis,<ref name="Youles_1976">Youles I.P. 1976. Mount Toondina impact structure. Geological Survey of South Australia Quarterly Geological Notes 60, 10–12.</ref> and strongly supported by subsequent studies.<ref name="Shoemaker_1988">Shoemaker E.M. & Shoemaker C.S. 1988. Impact Structures of Australia (1987). Lunar and Planetary Science Conference XIX, 1079–1080. Abstract</ref> A geophysical survey using gravity methods indicates an internal structure typical of complex impact craters, including an uplifted centre, and suggests that the original crater was about 3–4 km in diameter.<ref name="Plescia_1991">Plescia J.B., Shoemaker E.M. & Shoemaker C.S. 1991. Gravity survey of the Mt. Toondina impact structure, South Australia. Lunar and Planetary Science Conference XXII, 1079–1080. Abstract</ref><ref name="Plescia_1994">Template:Cite journal</ref> The crater must be younger than the Early Cretaceous age of the rocks in which it is situated, but otherwise is not well dated. It has clearly undergone significant erosion since the impact event.

Further reading

• Halihan, T., Dressler, A., Love, A., Xie, Y., Simmons, C. T., et al., Numerical and hydrogeophysical model of Mount Toonsina impact crater, South Australia. (Abstract). Geological Society of America, vol. 44, pp. 535. 2012
• Moorcroft, E., Geophysical investigation, Mt. Toondina area. Quarterly Geological Notes, The Geological Survey of South Australia, v. 12, pp. 3–6. 1964