All articles tagged with #meteor crater
Daniel Barringer spent 26 years drilling for a massive iron meteorite beneath Arizona’s Meteor Crater, believing it was a pre-delivered ore deposit. He was right that the crater was formed by an impact but wrong that the meteorite survived; the object vaporized upon arrival. His family still owns the site, now a profitable tourist attraction.
A camper’s intuition on Google Maps led researchers to confirm a 15-mile-wide meteor crater in Quebec’s Côte-Nord region. Fieldwork revealed shatter cones and impact melt rock, dating the crater to about 390 million years ago, making it one of the larger known craters worldwide (with roughly 200 total known crater sites and 31 in Canada).
An amateur using Google Maps spotted a pit in Quebec’s Côte-Nord that turned out to be a 390-million-year-old meteor crater named Uhackatik, about 25 km across. A four-person team confirmed the site in 2025 after a rugged field expedition, finding impact melt rock and shatter cones as evidence. The discovery ranks among the larger craters identified in recent years and will be presented at the Meteoritical Society congress in Germany.
Arizona's Meteor Crater was ranked 11th among the U.S.'s top roadside attractions in a Betway Casino study that weighed TripAdvisor reviews, Instagram posts, and online search volume; visitors can view the crater from the rim (interior is off-limits for safety) with general adult admission around $29.
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.
Arizona’s Meteor Crater, formed about 50,000 years ago, remains the best-preserved Earth impact site and a living laboratory for studying impact processes. Ongoing fieldwork, lab analyses, and computer studies—supported by Barringer Family Fund grants—continue to produce new data, with researchers like Dan Durda saying the crater provides new insights every year and climate and geological processes can obscure other craters elsewhere.
A recent study suggests that an asteroid impact 56,000 years ago not only created Meteor Crater in Arizona but also caused a seismic shockwave that temporarily dammed the Colorado River, forming an ancient lake in the Grand Canyon, with evidence found in driftwood and sediment layers linking the two landmarks.
A new study suggests that a 56,000-year-old asteroid impact that created Meteor Crater in Arizona may have also caused a seismic event leading to the formation of an ancient lake in the Grand Canyon, linking these two iconic landmarks through cosmic violence.
A new study suggests that a meteor impact 56,000 years ago may have caused a landslide that temporarily dammed the Grand Canyon's Colorado River, forming a paleolake, with evidence linking the impact to geological changes in the region.
New research suggests that the asteroid impact creating Meteor Crater around 55,600 years ago triggered a massive earthquake and landslide, which may have contributed to the formation of a long-standing paleolake in the Grand Canyon area, potentially resolving a 60-year-old geological mystery.
Experts believe that the largest meteor crater on Earth, spanning up to 520km in diameter, is hidden deep beneath the town of Deniliquin in New South Wales, Australia. This crater, believed to be caused by a meteor twice as powerful as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, is linked to the Late Ordovician extinction event that occurred between 445.2 and 443.8 million years ago. The crater has yet to be tested by drilling, but its existence is supported by geophysical data and magnetic patterns. Further research and drilling are needed to determine the exact age and gather physical evidence of the impact.