The Perkins Lake Site

The Perkins site (on farmland near Perkins, Louisiana,USA) is claimed by some as North America's first identified airburst crater, dating to the onset of the Younger Dryas period. The site is an unassuming, shallow depression some 300 metres across. Enthusiasts investigating the feature argue that it contains evidence for a low-altitude cosmic airburst, and that deposits found in and around the depression may preserve the physical traces of such an event.

The lake is located east of Perkins, LA, in the state’s southwest corner (inset, arrow) and is called the Perkins site. Base image: USGS. Inset image: Google Maps, 2024, INEGI.

The story of the site begins in 1938, when Walter Leo Fitzenreiter Jr., father of Robert Fitzenreiter, who would later lead the research team publishing the discovery (Fitzenreiter 2025), first speculated that a seasonal lake on his property might be an "impact crater". His interpretation was based largely on the shape of the feature and the presence of a crater-like rim, raised approximately a metre above the surrounding terrain. At the time, there was little more than the morphology of the depression to support the idea.

Depression with locations of glass-and-spherule-rich material outlined with the white dotted line. Image: Google Earth, Maxar Technologies; imagery date: 12/13/2003.

More than six decades later, in 2006, Robert Fitzenreiter began digging at the site. During this work he identified several locations around the lake where large, semi-consolidated masses of spherules occurred together with multi-centimetre-sized fragments of black, vesicular glass. Fitzenreiter reasoned that these unusual materials might have been produced by a cosmic airburst or impact event. In 2011, he contacted members of the Comet Research Group, who subsequently undertook analyses of the materials in an attempt to establish their characteristics and origin.

The resulting investigation has produced a collection of observations that the researchers regard as particularly significant. Large numbers of fused spherules and substantial fragments of high-temperature meltglass have been recovered, which they interpret as indicators of an extreme cosmic event. There are also reported to be abundant shocked quartz grains and microbreccia. These are geological features that can be associated with impact processes and, according to the researchers, are especially characteristic of confirmed impact sites.

The exceptionally high concentrations of meltglass and spherules reported at Perkins are presented as another important feature of the site. According to the research team, their abundance ranks among the greatest found at any known impact or airburst site. Chemical and structural analyses have further suggested similarities between the Perkins spherules and meltglass and materials recovered from other proposed Younger Dryas impact sites in the United States and elsewhere.

A range of analytical techniques has been applied to the material, including optical microscopy, universal-stage analysis, electron microscopy (SEM, TEM and STEM), cathodoluminescence, laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), neutron activation analysis (INAA), and radiometric dating. The researchers report that these investigations reveal morphological and compositional similarities between the Perkins deposits and impact-related proxies identified at other sites.

Dating is particularly important to the interpretation. Radiocarbon dating and ^40Ar/^39Ar analyses are reported to constrain the possible age of deposition to between approximately 30,000 and 10,000 calibrated years BP, with a concentration of dates around 12,800 years BP, specifically 12,835–12,735 cal BP, i.e., falling within the generally proposed age range of the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB), approximately 12,800 years ago.

On this interpretation, a low-altitude, or "touch-down", airburst could plausibly have produced the shallow depression as well as the unusual concentrations of meltglass and spherules found around it. The Perkins site would therefore represent, in the researchers' view, North America's first identified airburst crater associated with the Younger Dryas Boundary. 

The research team consequently concludes that the results of the investigation highlight the scientific significance of the Perkins discovery for both geology and “our understanding of cosmic hazards”.
Yeah, right. But first lets see the facts. For a site report, these 25 authors are very coy about saying EXACTLY where it is (30°23'53.55"N  93°21'13.66"W ) or showing its actual situation in the cultural landscape. In favct it is very much more complex than a simple depression, there are banks and water courses in it. That 'rim around' the site is difficult to discern on the satellite photos, but there are artificial banks crossing it, and there is a supicion (not helped by the fact that there is not a single sectoion of the stratigraphy published) that this depression was dug out as a sandpit and the banks around the edges are of stripped topsoil. The banks crossing the site may be an attempt to channel a stream that crosses the site. In my opinion, before jumping to conclusions on what this site was, the investigators needed to pay more attention to the geomrophology of the site and the nature of the deposits in and around it as well as the landscape history of the surroundings of the site. There is still much more to be investigated and documented before drawing conmclusions about some extraterrestrial influences.  

I also note that there is no archaeological context given for those C14 dates (or the "arrowheads" that seem to play some part in the dating process) this would be because they don't really seem to have gone for working out the stratigraphy, and Hole 1 is off the edge of the depression, not through the layers of its silting. WHY? I really do not understand the fascination wiyth "Baysian age-depth" models in a set of scattered dates obtained from a stratigraphical sequence that is not a sequence because they've not defined it. Just bonkers and meythodologically inept. Can we get some real archaeologists looking at this site? 

References

Martin Sweatman 2025,  'The first Younger Dryas impact surface feature identified?' Martin Sweatman Blog June 07, 2025.

Robert Fitzenreiter, Kord Ernstson, Gunther Kletetschka, Malcolm A. LeCompte, Christopher R. Moore, James P. Kennett, Michael Bizimis, Florian Hofmann, Marian Takac, A. Victor Adedeji, Timothy Witwer, Julie E. Chouinard, Jesus Paulo Perez, Marc D. Young, Teresa M. Eaton, Matthew J. Valente, David B. Lanning Jr., Yoav Rapoport, Kailey Ellison, Argyro Reyes, Ravi Holladay, Michelle Madrigal, Julian Albanil, Charlie Sanchez and Allen West 2025, 'Evidence of a 12,800-year-old Shallow Airburst Depression in Louisiana with Large Deposits of Shocked Quartz and Melted Materials', Airbursts and Cratering Impacts Vol. 3(1). DOI: 10.14293/ACI.2025.0004 [Research Gate].