United States Meteorite Impact Craters

Marquez Crater - According to the Earth Impact Database, the Marquez Crater is a 58 million year old 12.7 km structure preserved in sedimentary rock.  Though the crater is almost completely buried. Some impacted rocks within the central uplift, which was known as the Marquez Dome prior to recognition as a crater, are exposed at the surface, however, and shattercones have been found in this material.  The vetical offset of the central uplift is in excess of 1200 meters (Sharpton, 1990).  Resource exploration in the area has produced numerous drilling records, which have been integrated with other avenues of investigation.

Evidence of Impact Origin

The impact origin of each location listed on this website has been supported by unambiguous diagnostic evidence of hypervelocity impact that has been reported in a scientific (usually peer reviewed) context.  Without such evidence, a geological structure is not a confirmed impact crater.  This section, which is included for each crater on this website, is not an exhaustive list of such published evidence, but is meant to demonstrate that appropriate work has been done for each listing.

• shatter cones
• multiple sets of planar deformation features in quartz grains

Other significant evidence: breccia, seismic reflectance and drill core data, Bouguer gravity anomaly mapping.

Location:

Marquez crater is located in the northwest corner of Leon County, in East Texas (Sharpton, 1990).  The mixed sedimentary target rocks are late Triassic or more recent. (Wong et al., 1993)  Sharpton, 1990, notes Cretaceous to Eocene.

Bibliography and References:

(If links to articles don't work, don't give up. Try pasting the link shown into a search engine or searching for the article authors, title, or other reference information.  If your research leads you to additional scientific references related to this crater, please help improve this resource by sending a note with the new citation(s) to: )

Buthman, D. B. (2000) 3D Seismic Investigation of Marquez Dome, East Texas (abstract). Abstracts of the 31st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Buchanan, P. C., Koeberl, C., and Reid, A. M. (1998) Impact into unconsolidated, water-rich sediments at the Marquez Dome, Texas. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, Volume 33, Issue 5, pp. 1053-1064. DOI: 10.1111/j.1945-5100.1998.tb01712.x

Dietz, R. S., McHone, J. F. (1991) Astroblemes recently confirmed with shatter cones (abstract). Abstracts of the 54th Meeting of the Meteoritical Society, Meteoritics, v. 26, issue 4, p. 332. DOI: 10.1111/j.1945-5100.1991.tb00730.x

Gibson J. W., Jr. (1990) Marquez Dome - An Impact Feature in Leon County, Texas. M.Sc. thesis, University of Houston, Texas, USA. 65 pp.

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Gibson J. W., Jr. and Sharpton V. L. (1989) Marquez Dome: A newly recognized complex impact structure in East Texas (abstract). Abstracts [Spring Meeting, 1989], EOS, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, Volume 70, issue 15, 383. DOI: 10.1029/EO070i015p00271

Grieve, R. A. F., Masaitis, V. L. (1994) The economic potential of terrestrial impact craters. International Geology Review, v. 36, pp. 105-151.



McHone, J. F., Sorkhabi, R. B. (1994) Apatite fission-track age of Marquez Dome impact structure, Texas (abstract). Abstracts of the 25th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, pp. 881-882.

Niquette T. and Norris M. (1983) Evaluation of a structurally disturbed portion of Wilcox lignite trend (abstract). American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin 67, 525-526. 

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Reimold, W. U. and Dressler, B. O. (1990) The economic significance of impact processes (abstract). Abstracts for the International Workshop on Meteorite Impact on the Early Earth, Perth, Australia, pp. 36-37.

Herrick R. R. and Sharpton, V. L. (1997) Shallow Seismic Test at Marquez Impact Structure (abstract), Abstracts of the 28th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Sharpton, V. L., Gibson, J. W. (1990) The Marquez Dome impact structure, Leon County, Texas (abstract). Abstracts of the 21st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, pp. 1136-1137.

Stenzel H. B. (1938) The Geology of Leon County, Texas. The University of Texas, Publication 3818, Austin, Texas, USA. 295 pp. 

Westbroek, H. and Stewart, R. (1996) The formation, morphology, and economic potential of meteorite impact craters, CREWES Research Report v. 8, page 34-6.

Wong A. M. (1994) The Subsurface Character of the Marquez Dome Impact Structure, Texas, As Determined by Well Log and Gravity Analysis. M.Sc. thesis, University of Houston, Texas, USA. 45 pp. 

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Wong, A. M., Reid, A. M., Hall, S. A., Sharpton, V. L. (2001) Reconstruction of the Subsurface Structure of the Marquez Impact Crater in Leon County, Texas, Based on Well-Log and Gravty Data, Meteoritics vol 36, No. 11.

Wong, A. M., Reid, A. M., Hall, S. A., and Sharpton V. L. (1993) Characterization of the Marquez Dome buried impact carter using gravity and magnetic data (abstract). Lunar and Planetary Science XXIV, pp. 1533-1534.

Wong, A. M., Reid, A. M., Hall, S. A. and Sharpton, V. L. (1994) The subsurface character of the Marquez impact crater in Leon County, Texas, as determined from gravity and well-log data (abstract). Abstracts of the 1994 Meteoritical Society Annual Meeting, Meteoritics, v. 29, pp. 552-553.

Wong, A. C., Sadow, J. C., Reid, A. M., Hall, S. A. and Sharpton, V. L. (1997) The Marquez crater in Leon County, Texas. in Ames Structure in Northwest Oklahoma and Similar Features: Origin and Petroleum Production (1995 Symposium), K. S. Johnson and Campbell J. A., eds., Oklahoma Geological Survey, Norman, Oklahoma, v. Circular 100, p. 278.