ABSTRACT
While there was still quite a vocal resistance to the renewal of the impact theory among the older generation of geologists, some of the younger ones prepared to test the volcanic and impact theories against new field evidence, overcoming a methodological fallacy that had infested Ries research since its beginning. An early attempt at testing an old presumption was undertaken by two mineralogists from the Mineralogical Institute of the University of Heidelberg, Arno Schüller and Joachim Ottemann. In this context, the two mineralogists set out to test the old paradigm of suevite as a volcanic rock. When Gerold published the results of his PhD project, he plainly stated his facts and observations, but refrained from interpretation in one or the other paradigm. There are many articles by geophysicists who produced mainly descriptive papers with the aim of answering once and for all the question of whether the Ries crater was due to an impact or volcanism.
