Large floor-fractured craters and isostatic crater modification: Implications for lithospheric thickness on Venus

Details Large floor-fractured craters and isostatic crater modification: Implications for lithospheric thickness on Venus Large floor-fractured craters and isostatic crater modification: Implications for lithospheric thickness on Venus

Mar 1993

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1993lpi....24.1515w&link_type=abstract

In Lunar and Planetary Inst., Twenty-Fourth Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Part 3: N-Z p 1515-1516 (SEE N94-20636 05-91

Physics

1

Crustal Fractures, Lithosphere, Lunar Craters, Meteoritic Damage, Planetary Craters, Venus (Planet), Venus Surface, Lunar Mantle, Planetary Geology, Planetary Mantles, Tectonics, Volcanology

Scientific paper

Several of the largest craters on Venus, including Mead, Meitner and Isabella, exhibit well-developed floor fracture patterns combining a central set of radial features with a peripheral set of concentric fractures. This pattern strongly resembles the fracture patterns observed in the largest floor-fractured craters on the Moon (e.g. Humboldt, Gauss, Petavius). Although most lunar floor-fractured craters apparently reflect crater modification by igneous intrusions and volcanism, we propose that the fractures in these larger craters represent domical flexure events in response to post-impact isostatic uplift. Since the extent of uplift and surface failure in this model depends on both the size of the basin cavity and the local lithospheric thickness, this interpretation also provides a means for constraining lithospheric thicknesses on Venus. Based on the apparent onset diameter of isostatic crater modification, we derive lithospheric thickness estimates for the Moon of approximately 80 - 100 km, and for Venus of approximately 50 - 70 km.

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