crater center

crater center, a photo by Argon[one] on Flickr.

Paul is standing at the center of the Wells Creek Basin Impact Crater. I, and about a dozen others, had the unique experience of visiting the point of impact of this 300-million-year-old asteroid/comet meteorite crater. This is the remains of a mighty explosion which occurred when a fiery meteorite came screaming southward into the atmosphere, Slamming into the earth, creating a two-rim crater: one rim about 7 miles in diameter and another at the impact point about 2 miles in diameter and perhaps a half mile deep.

Since this event happened 300 million years ago, there is much speculation. No metallic minerals [iron and nickel] were found at ground zero, therefore many believe this was the impact of a comet, a fiery ball of ice.

Our quest on this day was to collect shattercones. The next post will be an image of one of the shattercones I collected on this field trip.