Ricevuto in copia da Peter Clayton e diffondo, anche perché sono completamente d'accordo:
>Major Peter H. Clayton, MBE, FRG.
e-mail: bear@blue-bear.freeserve.co.uk
The Editor,
Geographical,
Winchester House,
259-269 Old Marylebone Road,
London, NW1 5RA
Dear Sir,
Worldwatch January 2005 – “World’s largest crater cluster discovered.”
The existance of these craters was first noted by my father Patrick Andrew Clayton FRGS on his Egyptian Desert Surveys expedition of 1931 during his triangulation traverse linking Wadi Halfa to Jebal Uwenat.
The area was re-visited and the largest craters were photographed from ground and from the air by my father from the Gipsy Moth “Rupert Bear” in the course of the 1932 “Zerzura Expedition” jointly organised by Sir Robert Clayton-East-Clayton and Count L. E. Almasy and the Desert Survey Department, my father being their guide and navigator. The “Lost Oasis” was not hidden in any of them! This expedition was reported and illustrated in “The Times” of Wednesday 6th July 1932 and contemporary Geographical Journals and the “London Illustrated News”.
The Survey of Egypt 1: 500,000 ‘Uweinât sheet 1942 that covers this area is still the only one published. The scripted (not typed) annotations on the sheet, namely ‘Group of craters’, ‘Basalt’, Small crater’, ‘Sand plain’ and others throughout, are from the original 1933 issue and are in my father’s own hand which I know well.
The circular rims of some of the craters I have entered are certainly basalt and appear like huge burst bubbles of molten rock. Their number and distribution far as the plateau of the Gilf Kebir as seen from space, looks to be meteoric or asteroid causation.
For some years now travellers to this part of the world have referred to these as “The Clayton Craters” in honour of their true discoverer – it would seem appropriate to perpetuate their name now that they have been “Rediscovered”.
The asteroid break-up impact theory is also the likely origin of the Libyan Desert Silica Glass first discovered some 150kms to the north by my father in November 1932, but that is another story, 28.5 million years old!
Yours sincerely,
Peter Clayton<
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