Arizona's Meteor Crater: A 50,000-Year Window into Earth's Impact History
A 50,000-year-old meteor impact crater near Winslow, Arizona — Meteor Crater — remains the best-preserved terrestrial impact site, serving as a natural laboratory for shock metamorphism and the effects of hypervelocity impacts. Its 4,000-foot diameter and 700-foot depth offer crucial data on Earth's impact history and inform comparisons to planetary surfaces and past biosphere changes, including mass extinction scenarios like the dinosaur wipeout.