We dedicate this paper to the memory of Sonny Stevens, without whom this remarkable crater would have continued in obscurity.Abstract-The <1,100 yr old Whitecourt meteorite impact crater, located south of Whitecourt, Alberta, Canada, is a well-preserved bowl-shaped structure having a depth and diameter of approximately 6 and 36 m, respectively. There are fewer than a dozen known terrestrial sites of similar size and age. Unlike most of these sites, however, the Whitecourt crater contains nearly all of the features associated with small impact craters including meteorites, ejecta blanket, observable transient crater boundary, raised rim, and associated shock indicators. This study indicates that the crater formed from the impact of an approximately 1 m diameter type IIIAB iron meteoroid traveling east-northeast at less than approximately 10 km s )1 , striking the surface at an angle between 40°and 55°to horizontal. It appears that the main mass survived atmospheric transit relatively intact, with fragmentation and partial melting during impact. Most meteoritic material has a jagged, shrapnel-like morphology and is distributed downrange of the crater.

Small impact events recorded on the surface of Earth are signifi cantly underrepresented based on expected magnitude-frequency relations. We report the discovery of a 36-m-diameter late Holocene impact crater located in a forested area near the town of Whitecourt, Alberta, Canada. Although undetectable using visible imagery, the presence of the crater is revealed using a bare-Earth digital elevation model obtained through airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR). The target material comprises deglacial Quaternary sediments, with impact ejecta burying a late Holocene soil dated to ca. 1100 14 C yr B.P. Most of the 74 iron meteorites (0.1-1196 g) recovered have an angular exterior morphology. These meteorites were buried at depths <25 cm and are interpreted to result from fragmentation of the original projectile mass, either at low altitude or during the impact event. Impact of the main mass formed the simple bowl-shaped impact structure associated with an ejecta blanket and crater fi ll. The increasing availability of LiDAR data for many terrestrial surfaces will serve as a useful tool in the discovery of additional small impact features.on June 9, 2015 geology.gsapubs.org Downloaded from

Optimizing the productivity of nonconventional, low‐permeability “shale” reservoirs requires detailed knowledge of the mechanical properties of such materials. These rocks' elastic anisotropy is acknowledged but usually ignored due to difficulties in obtaining such information. Here we study in detail the dynamic and static elastic properties of a suite of calcareous mudstones from the nonconventional Duvernay reservoir of Alberta, Canada. The complete set of transversely isotropic elastic constants is obtained from strategically oriented ultrasonic transducers to confining pressures of 90 MPa. Wave speed anisotropies of up to 35% are observed at even the highest confining pressures. Furthermore, the stress sensitivity of the wave speeds, and hence moduli, is itself highly dependent on direction with speeds taken perpendicular to the bedding plane being highly nonlinearly dependent on pressure, whereas those along the bedding plane show, unexpectedly, nearly no pressure dependence. These observations are in qualitative agreement with the preferentially oriented porosity and minerals seen in scanning electron microscope images. These results may be significant to the interpretation of sonic logs and azimuthal amplitude versus offset for principal stress directions, for the concentration of stress within such formations, and for estimation of static engineering moduli from sonic log wave speeds.

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