After falling back to Earth as showers of glass, many tektites lay exposed to weathering and erosion at the surface or shallow depth. Many thousands of Australites have been washed into shallow lakes or depressions and are now found on claypans, and shallow drainage depressions.
Effects of high temperatures, wind, rainfall and chemical attack have produced various types of surface etching or corrosion - pits, furrows, grooves or 'saw-cuts'. Many Australites lose their rims under these conditions and become rimless cores. There is a strange corroded, layered type, the Muong Nong from Laos, south-east Asia, which forms masses up to 24 kg and may have melted only at the Earth's surface rather than being projected up into its atmosphere and melting again on re-entry.
There is no record of anyone having ever witnessed the fall of a tektite, and their formation may depend on the very infrequent arrival of those large meteorites or asteroids which would cause great devastation if they came today.
Copyright © Australian Museum, 2004