Catherine Corrigan Catherine Corrigan Catherine Margaret Corrigan (born 1972), often known as Cari Corrigan, is an American scientist best known as a curator of the meteorite collection at the Smithsonian Institution. She is a scientist in the Department of Mineral Science at the National Museum of Natural History. Corrigan obtained a Bachelor of Science in 1995 and a Master of Science in 1998, both in Geology at Michigan State University. Her master's thesis was titled "The Composition of Impact Breccias from the Chicxulub Impact Crater, Yucatan Peninsula, Yucatan, Mexico". She later earned a Ph.D in Planetary Science at Case Western Reserve University
Impact crater central uplift is not the result of "elastic rebound", which is a process in which a material with elastic strength attempts to return to its original geometry; rather the collapse is a process in which a material with little or no strength attempts to return to a state of gravitational equilibrium. Complex craters have uplifted centers, and they have typically broad flat shallow crater floors, and terraced walls. At the largest sizes, one or more exterior or interior rings may appear, and the structure may be labeled an "impact basin" rather than an impact crater. Complex-crater morphology on rocky planets