locality help - South Australia Tektite Myrtle Springs (Pine Dam)

Hi folks - hope you all had a great time at Tucson - sounds like it was a fantastic year weather-wise.

Meanwhile, back at the Mielke-Wilson household, I've been plugging away at the catalog. We have this tektite specimen labelled Myrtle Springs, South Australia.



On page 9 of this document [www.sil.si.edu] , there is mention of Myrtle Springs as being found in the lake Torrens area:

The geological setting is remarkably uniform over vast areas, and is illustrated in Figure 4 by sections through dunes and claypans at Motpena and Myrtle Springs (Pine Dam) in the Lake Torrens region of South Australia.

It would seem that the locale is not yet built into Mindat, but I wonder if someone who is more familiar with the region could advise whether the locality is already built into Mindat under a different name?

Thanks in advance
Maggie

Hi Maggie,

Myrtle Springs is a large sheep station on the western side of the Northern Flinders Ranges, where the ranges stop and the flat plains of the Lake Torrens basin starts. This is sand dune country and the tektites are found sitting on the claypans between the dunes. What happens is, the winds move the dunes and the heavier stones such as these tektites are concentrated in the claypans between the shifting dunes. To find them all you do is walk along the claypan towards the sun and they stand out as green shiny specks on the ground. There is a large belt running across this part of South Australia where the tektites are found and they increase in availability in the sand dune country due to this concentration effect.

As far as the location is concerned - it could come under either Lake Torrens Basin area or Northern Flinders Ranges area as the station is sitting on the edge of these two districts. I don't think that Myrtle Springs is already listed under a different name.

Cheeers, Trev

That's marvelous information, Trevor, thank you!

For now, I am going to build the locality under South Australia with notations from your post.

[www.mindat.org]

Cheers
Maggie



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2012 01:07AM by Maggie Wilson.