While working near San Ignacio, Belize around 1990 geologist Jean Cornec was given a rounded black glassy pebble. This stone had been found close to Mayan ruins at Bullet Tree Falls, Cayo district, Belize. The specimen was assumed by Jean to be obsidian until seeing a tektite exhibit during a 1993 visit to the Denver Museum of Natural History in Colorado, USA.
In 1995 Glen Izett would examine this stone and another specimen found in nearby Belizian Mayan context. They would be confirmed as eight hundred thousand year old tektites from an unknown strewnfield.
Similar tektites had previously been described from Guatemalan Mayan excavations. It would be another nine years before a chance encounter with an individual from Branch Mouth Village, just down the road from Bullet Tree, would lead to a small tektite collection and subsequent collection of the first Belize tektites from geological context in nearby soils. Within one year Andre Cho, Director of the Belize National Geology Department and Jean Cornec would log recoveries of these rare stones from two nearby locations.
Photo Credits: Apogee Photography
Links:
THE NEW CENTRAL AMERICAN TEKTITE STREWN FIELD
A NEW TEKTITE STREWN FIELD DISCOVERED IN WESTERN BELIZE
