Don, I read another article on the Chesapeake crater and did not find it completely convincing. By now they probably have more data, though. The age of the Permian-Triassic is something over 200 million years-I have to look it up, probably 220 or 250. So, a few times older than the Chesapeake. And, the impactor for the end of the Permian would have been a couple orders of magnitude more massive. Canie: The Geologist who will be working with the samples (Luann Becker) said it is becoming clear that there was an impact event. There are 4 or 5 sites in the world that are similar to the one that I sampled, with strong evidence of an impact. I'm sending the samples to her-do a search on her and you will find her work. According to her, another geologist working on a permian-triassic boundary in NY state is Paul Olsen (sp?Olson?) of Lamont-Doherty. I'm about to mail or Fedex the sample to California to Becker, where I work, rather than just hand deliver them to Olsen, 5 km from where I live, and where I will be in a couple hours anyway.
Chris