Diamond‐Like‐Carbon, Microdiamonds, Titanium Spherules and New UHT Minerals in Impact Debris From the SW Egypt Regolith: Possible Relations to the Extraterrestrial Carbonaceous Pebble “Hypatia” and the Libyan Desert Glass

Abstract

Abstract In this paper we report the discovery, in the Gilf Kebir Plateau of southwest Egypt, of the first natural occurrence of Diamond‐Like‐Carbon, of microdiamonds, and new ultra‐high T (≥1300°C) silicates, phosphates in boulders and pebbles of a mullite and magnetite melt rock. We also report, in the regolith of the Libyan Desert Glass (LDG) strewn field, comparable mullite‐magnetite pebbles and, in paleosols, Diamond‐Like‐Carbon, N‐rich amorphous carbon, aliphatic hydrocarbons, moissanite, and metallic spherules and grains of native Ti. These findings point to a ∼350 km, south to north strewnfield of melt rocks and their related disaggregated debris formed by the impact of a carbonaceous meteorite in the Jebel Uweinat, near the Egypt‐Sudan border. At the northern end of their fluvial depository, the reworked debris co‐mingled with the LDG strewnfield, likely originated from a second impact in the Gilf Kebir. The date of the diamonds‐forming mullite impact melt is undetermined but tentatively linked to the 29 Ma event of the LDG, because disordered carbon + aliphatic compounds were found in a glass and in the, extraterrestrial (extrasolar) “Hypatia” from the same areas. The latter is considered as relic of the original, parent impactor.