Most significantly, the Breccia contains shocked quartz from the impact, carbonate spherules from the vapor cloud that was created, and iridium from the projectile itself. In the millions of years since the impact, tectonic plates shifted, mountains moved and the landscape was repeatedly altered. Today, evidence of the impact can be found in 15 different mountain ranges, now separated by desert valleys. We're putting mountains and strata back to where they started. Learning more about impact sites in general and the Alamo Breccia in particular furthers our understanding of the development and evolution of Earth.
Paleontologists use the information to help understand how extinctions occur.
The Alamo Breccia is an especially good impact site to study because it is in the desert and well exposed. Alamo Breccia can be used as a model for discovering new sites. To learn more about what to look for at impact sites, Warme and Lee traveled to Siberia in July to study the Popigai crater. Studying the much younger Popigai crater gave Warme the chance to see the proper relationship between these parts, and then return to Nevada to look for those same relationships. What occurred in Tunguska in 1908 is still unexplained, though many believe it, too, was caused by an extraterrestrial object.