FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 29, 2003      File #356
Contact: Jean Wasp, Media Relations, (707) 664-2057

Do You Have Tektites in Your Backyard?
Geology Professor Searches for Remnants of Ancient Asteroids

Some have called them "teardrops from the moon."

Ancient cultures have seen them as a source of magic and sorcery.

To the scientific mind of Rolfe Erickson, they may be signs of ancient asteroids.

The Sonoma State University geology professor has seen a kind of serendipity to the story of how his dormant geological research took on new life a few months ago.

Erickson is making the rounds of rock and mineral societies these days putting out a call for "tektites" among amateur and professional rock hounds in the Bay Area.

Geologists call the tektites littered over a large area a "strewn field." There are only five known strewn fields on the planet — in the Czech republic, the southeastern United States, Australia, Indochina and the Gold Coast in Africa.

Tektites from these areas each have their own distinctive look and feel. If Erickson can find evidence of enough tektites in a local strewn field, he may have come across the first in western North America.

Ranging in size from a walnut to a peach pit, tektites look like dark,
dusty, pitted glass. They were made in the distant past when asteroids hit the earth at enormous speeds and the impact pushed vaporized gas into the atmosphere.

Shaped by frictional forces on the way back down to earth, the gas froze in the cold of space and rained in various shapes and sizes back onto the planet in areas spanning 1,000 miles. "People are somehow attracted to these strange little pebbles," Erickson says.

They seem to be the kind of things people want to pick up off the ground and throw into a mason jar or bucket until they have a "collection." In this region, tektites are most easily found in vineyards or road cuts where the soil has been deeply churned up.

That was the case with his first collection, donated to him 12 years ago by a woman who used to walk in a nearby vineyard to get exercise and picked up the dark, pitted rocks along the way. Erickson put the collection of more than 100 in a small cardboard box in the bottom drawer of his desk after analysis of the rocks could not pin down their origin or type.

Six months ago, a geology student told him about an uncle who owned a vineyard who had his own tektite collection, made again from vineyard wanderings over time. Only recently, Erickson was told of a third collection by a vineyard manager he approached after finding about 20 tektites in the same area of Healdsburg as the others. It turned out all three people knew each other, but none of them knew they were private tektite collectors in Dry Creek Valley.

If you have been collecting tektites and can help professor Erickson, contact him at (707) 664-2296.

CAPTION: Geology professor Rolfe Erickson with tektites collected from strewn fields all over the world. (Photo by Jean Wasp)