8 
FLANGES OF AUSTRALITES (TEKTITES) 
encircling australites are commonly found on buttons and more 
rarely on dumb-bells, ovals and boats, but flanges on dumb-bells 
are usually restricted to the waist and those on boats and ovals 
to the sides. On canoes, flanges when present are confined to the 
two ends, and on teardrops to the narrow end and half way along 
the sides. Unabraded lenses have small, sharply defined rims 
(Fig. 2 b) which may be considered incipient flanges. Air bombs, 
large cores (Baker, 1940 b) and aberrant forms are flangeless. 
Complete circular flanges from buttons and fragments of elongated 
flanges from ovals are occasionally found unattached to cores. 
One circular flange has been figured by Dunn (1912 a) and another 
by Hodge Smith (1939). On the posterior surfaces of some 
australites smooth bands 2 mm. to 2' 5 mm. wide mark the positions 
from which flanges have broken away. 
Fig. 1 illustrates the various parts of an australite. The chin is 
the rounded inner edge of the flange; the neck is the surface of 
the flange below the chin and facing the core, and the seat is the 
POSTERIOR SURFACE 
AN TER/OR SURFACE 
FIG. 1. 
Radial Section of an Australite. 
part of the core on which the flange rests. Flow ridges are ridges 
on the anterior surface of the core, and the spaces separating 
adjacent flow ridges are the flow troughs. The gap between flange 
and core is marked a; the thickness of glass between the bottom 
