Researching the Alamo Impact Site

The Alamo Project is trying to uncover the size and shape of the Alamo impact crater in Nevada. We are trying to see how the event that created it affected the ancient marine environment and the animals that once lived there. This is accomplished by mapping out the vertical and lateral dimensions of a rock unit known as the Alamo Breccia. The Alamo Breccia is the middle member of the Guilmette Formation in southern Nevada and is made up of limestone that was obliterated during the Alamo Impact Event.

How Research is Designed

Research can be designed in a number of ways to best suit the problem at hand but in each case its structure is guided by some fundamental question. In the sciences researchers will typically design their project in order to not only answer the original question, but also to generate new questions and make predictions. Our research on the Alamo Breccia involves intensive measuring of rock thicknesses and mapping out how these thicknesses vary spatially. It is also important for us to know some of the basic morphology of simple and complex impact craters so that we can better predict how thicknesses will vary based on their location. All of this is done to answer our underlying query of discovering a hidden impact crater.