ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1960, the high-pressure mineral coesite had already been discovered at Meteor Crater by Chao, Shoemaker and Madsen, and Shoemaker was about to give an oral presentation on his research at the 21st International Geological Congress in Copenhagen. The work by Shoemaker and Chao was then finally published in October 1961. Engelhardt had been occupied for ten years with sedimentology for the oil industry in northern Germany, and consequently his initial knowledge of the Ries Basin, as he was well aware, was non-existent. But when he heard about the new discovery of the high-pressure mineral as impact evidence, he was intrigued and 'began immediately with collaborators and diploma and PhD students to work on the one hand in the Ries and on the other experimentally on the effect of highest pressures on minerals. Thereby, we succeeded to further support the impact theory'.
