Long-term effect of the Kärdla crater (Hiiumaa, Estonia) on Late Ordovician carbonate sedimentation

Kärdla impact crater, 4 km in diameter, was formed in the early Caradoc (Late Ordovician) in the Baltoscandian shelf sea, a sediment-starved temperate-water carbonate basin. The Upper Ordovician post-impact sediments that cover the Kärdla crater are 15–275 m thick. The crater rimwall is composed of three separate basement rises that formed islands or shoals in the Late Ordovician shelf sea and influenced the sedimentation in the surrounding area. The rises provide the means to study the shallow-water sedimentary environments and sea-level history. This may be one of the few cases, where shore environments of the Baltoscandian Ordovician palaeobasin are preserved in the geological record. Lithofacies distribution was studied in the crater area from data of about 100 drillcores. Grain size distribution and composition of the non-carbonate material were analyzed in six core sections in order to reconstruct the history of crater erosion.

The post-impact marine deposits lie on a partly redeposited and mixed ejecta layer derived from the Cambrian to Lower Ordovician silici-clastic deposits in the target area. Beds of marine carbonate sediments of Caradoc age, wackestones and mudstones, on-lap on the slope of the crater rim. A shift of sedimentation towards the crater rim during the Caradoc is evidence of a relative sea-level rise, which was a combination of early Caradoc eustatic rise, crater area subsidence, and compaction of pre-impact and impact sediments. The occurrences of coarse sand and gravel in specific stratigraphic intervals reflect the intensity of wave action and sea-level changes in the area. A detailed curve of sea-level changes during Late Ordovician has been constructed and different post-impact sedimentation models are presented for the crater area. The sedimentation pattern changed during the Caradoc as a result of sea-level rise and climatic change. The synchronous appearance of echinoderm bioclastic accumulations in shoal areas in Estonian mainland and in the Kärdla rim dates the climatic change in the basin area as late Keila (middle Caradoc) time.

Assuming that the Caradoc lasted about 11 million years, infilling of the Kärdla crater required about 7 million years, and influence of the crater structure on sedimentation was obvious even 10 million years after the impact event. The tectonic stability of the region, the low rate of sedimentation, and long lasting differential compaction of sediments in the crater area account for this extraordinary long influence of crater. The Kärdla crater is an example of the astrobleme, formed in ancient shelf sea, which may be used to reconstruct basin history of post-impact times.