Sculpturing of moldavites and the problem of micromoldavites

Abstract

Nininger and Huss stated in 1967 that the sculpturing of the surfaces of two very rare indoehinites from South Vietnam occurred in the atmosphere and was not due to etching by soil agencies. However, very important and convincing features observed in moldavites and reported in this paper support the opinion that moldavite sculpturing is due to chemical corrosion in soils and gravels. It is concluded that when moldavites fell on the earth's surface they were already cool solid bodies. Many of the falling moldavites, however, were fragmented on landing. All of them, emplaced in the soil, were strongly corroded. Pure (hyaline) and translucent glassy drops, a few tenths of a millimeter in diameter, have been separated by washing the material encountered by an 80-m-deep bore through Pannonian sediments in southern Moravia. These glassy drops may have been produced as slag spherules from steam engines; they may have been in the volcanic dust from Slovakian rhyolites; or they may be micromoldavites. To solve this problem, a more detailed investigation would be necessary.