Comment on: ‘‘K–Ar evidence from illitic clays of a Late Devonian age for the 120 km diameter Woodleigh impact structure, Southern Carnarvon Basin, Western Australia’’, by I.T. Uysal, S.D. Golding, A.Y. Glikson, A.J. Mory and M. Glikson [Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 192 (2001) 218–289

Abstract

K–Ar isotopic ages presented by Uysal et al. for illitic clay minerals from drill core samples were interpreted to date the Woodleigh impact event at 359±4 Ma, allegedly implicating Woodleigh in the Late Devonian mass extinction. However, only very equivocal evidence is presented by Uysal et al. to support a link between clay mineral paragenesis and impact-related features, and the K–Ar ages reveal a distribution that is essentially a continuum between 308 and 364 Ma. The ‘age’ computed by Uysal et al. is based on an average of the five oldest ages within this group, which has no geological or statistical basis. The stratigraphic age constraints considered by Uysal et al. to be consistent with this age are much weaker than acknowledged, and the impact could have been much older than mid-Devonian. The size of the Woodleigh crater is poorly constrained (and the subject of an ongoing controversy); Uysal et al.’s suggestion of 120 km diameter is probably overestimated by a factor of two, in which case a link to any mass extinction is unlikely.