 It concluded that the crater had indeed been caused by an impact.Barringer and his partner, the mathematician and physicist Benjamin Chew Tilghman, documented evidence for the impact theory in papers presented to the U.S. Geological Survey in 1906 and published in the "Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences" in Philadelphia.Barringer's arguments were met with skepticism, as there was a reluctance at the time to consider the role of meteorites in terrestrial geology.