Meteorite Impact Craters

215 confirmed impact craters on Earth, 112 still visible at the surface

Every impact structure confirmed by the Earth Impact Database, with its diameter and age. Many are buried under later rock or worn down to a ring of disturbed rock seen only from the air or in drill cores. Sort any column, or type a name, state or country; the buttons filter by age.

Vredefort in South Africa is the largest and oldest, about 160 km across and 2 billion years old

• Vredefort, South Africa: 160 km, 2,023 million years
• Chicxulub, Yucatan, Mexico: 150 km, 66 million years
• Sudbury, Ontario, Canada: 130 km, 1,850 million years
• Manicouagan, Quebec, Canada: 100 km, 216 million years
• Popigai, Russia: 100 km, 36 million years
• Acraman, South Australia, Australia: 90 km, 590 million years
• Talundilly, Queensland, Australia: 84 km, 125 million years
• Puchezh-Katunki, Russia: 80 km, 196 million years

Chicxulub, buried under Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, marks the impact 66 million years ago that ended the age of the dinosaurs. The asteroid was about 10 km across; a ring of sinkholes, the cenotes, traces the buried rim. The Sudbury basin in Canada holds one of the world's richest nickel deposits, melted out of the crust by the impact.

The youngest craters formed within living memory

• Carancas, Peru: 0.0135 km, 19 years
• Sikhote-Alin, Russia: 0.026 km, 79 years
• Wabar, Saudi Arabia: 0.116 km, 290 years
• Sobolev, Russia: 0.053 km, 1 thousand years
• Haviland, Kansas, USA: 0.015 km, 1 thousand years
• Whitecourt, Alberta, Canada: 0.036 km, 1 thousand years
• Dalgaranga, Western Australia, Australia: 0.024 km, 3 thousand years
• Kaali, Estonia: 0.11 km, 4 thousand years

Small iron meteorites leave fresh craters often enough to be witnessed: the Sikhote-Alin fall in Russia in 1947 made more than 100 craters, and a chondrite dug a 13-meter crater at Carancas, Peru, in 2007.

31 confirmed craters in the United States, from Meteor Crater to the buried Chesapeake Bay crater

• Wetumpka, Alabama, USA: 6.5 km, 83 million years
• Avak, Alaska, USA: 12 km, 95 million years
• Barringer (Meteor Crater), Arizona, USA: 1.19 km, 49 thousand years
• Des Plaines, Illinois, USA: 8 km, 280 million years
• Glasford, Illinois, USA: 4 km, 430 million years
• Kentland, Indiana, USA: 13 km, 97 million years
• Decorah, Iowa, USA: 5.6 km, 465 million years
• Manson, Iowa, USA: 35 km, 74 million years
• Haviland, Kansas, USA: 0.015 km, 1 thousand years
• Middlesboro, Kentucky, USA: 6 km, 300 million years
• Calvin, Michigan, USA: 8.5 km, 450 million years
• Crooked Creek, Missouri, USA: 7 km, 320 million years
• Decaturville, Missouri, USA: 6 km, 300 million years
• Beaverhead, Montana and Idaho, USA: 60 km, 600 million years
• Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA: 13 km, 1,200 million years
• Newporte, North Dakota, USA: 3.2 km, 500 million years
• Red Wing, North Dakota, USA: 9 km, 200 million years
• Serpent Mound, Ohio, USA: 8 km, 320 million years
• Ames, Oklahoma, USA: 16 km, 470 million years
• Flynn Creek, Tennessee, USA: 3.8 km, 382 million years
• Wells Creek, Tennessee, USA: 12 km, 200 million years
• Marquez, Texas, USA: 12.7 km, 58 million years
• Odessa, Texas, USA: 0.168 km, 64 thousand years
• Sierra Madera, Texas, USA: 13 km, 100 million years
• Upheaval Dome, Utah, USA: 10 km, 170 million years
• Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, USA: 40 km, 35 million years
• Glover Bluff, Wisconsin, USA: 8 km, 500 million years
• Rock Elm, Wisconsin, USA: 6 km, 505 million years
• Cloud Creek, Wyoming, USA: 7 km, 190 million years
• Douglas, Wyoming, USA: 0.08 km, 280 million years
• Jake Seller Draw, Wyoming, USA: 4.3 km, 280 million years

38 craters have a visitor center, trail or viewpoint

• Campo del Cielo, Argentina: Campo del Cielo meteorite park near Gancedo (Chaco)
• Boxhole, Australia: Boxhole Meteorite Crater Conservation Reserve (Northern Territory)
• Gosses Bluff, Australia: Tnorala Conservation Reserve (Northern Territory)
• Henbury, Australia: Henbury Meteorites Conservation Reserve (Northern Territory)
• Lawn Hill, Australia: Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park (Queensland)
• Acraman, Australia: Lake Acraman, next to Gawler Ranges National Park (South Australia)
• Piccaninny, Australia: Purnululu National Park (Western Australia)
• Wolfe Creek, Australia: Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater National Park (Western Australia)
• Araguainha, Brazil: Araguainha Dome geosite (Mato Grosso/Goias)
• Whitecourt, Canada: Whitecourt Meteorite Impact Crater, Provincial Historic Resource with trail (Alberta)
• West Hawk, Canada: Whiteshell Provincial Park (West Hawk Lake, Manitoba)
• Brent, Canada: Algonquin Provincial Park (Brent Crater trail and lookout tower)
• Slate Islands, Canada: Slate Islands Provincial Park (Lake Superior)
• Sudbury, Canada: Dynamic Earth science center (Sudbury, Ontario)
• Charlevoix, Canada: Observatoire de l'Astroblème de Charlevoix (La Malbaie, Quebec)
• Manicouagan, Canada: Manicouagan Reservoir, beside Route 389 and the Manic-5 dam (Quebec)
• Pingualuit (New Quebec), Canada: Parc national des Pingualuit (Nunavik)
• Ilumetsa, Estonia: Ilumetsa craters hiking trail (Põlva County, Estonia)
• Kaali, Estonia: Kaali Meteorite Crater visitor center (Saaremaa, Estonia)
• Rochechouart, France: Espace Météorite Paul Pellas-Graham and the Rochechouart-Chassenon astrobleme nature reserve (France)
• Ries, Germany: RiesKrater-Museum Nördlingen; Ries UNESCO Global Geopark
• Steinheim, Germany: Meteorkrater-Museum Steinheim (Germany)
• Bosumtwi, Ghana: Lake Bosumtwi (lakeshore villages and lodges near Kumasi, Ghana)
• Lonar, India: Lonar Lake wildlife sanctuary and Ramsar site (Maharashtra)
• Ramgarh, India: Ramgarh Crater geo-heritage site and Bhand Devra temple (Baran district)
• Roter Kamm, Namibia: Inside the restricted Sperrgebiet (Tsau //Khaeb National Park); permit only
• Gardnos, Norway: Gardnos Meteorite Park (Nesbyen, Norway)
• Morasko, Poland: Morasko Meteorite Nature Reserve (Poznań, Poland)
• Tswaing, South Africa: Tswaing Meteorite Crater nature reserve and museum (near Pretoria)
• Vredefort, South Africa: Vredefort Dome UNESCO World Heritage Site (Free State/North West)
• Wetumpka, USA: Wetumpka Impact Crater tours (city of Wetumpka, Alabama)
• Barringer (Meteor Crater), USA: Meteor Crater visitor center and rim trail (private, fee; near Winslow, Arizona)
• Kentland, USA: Kentland quarry (private, visible from US 24)
• Middlesboro, USA: The city of Middlesboro, Kentucky sits in the crater
• Santa Fe, USA: Shatter cones along NM 475 (Hyde Park Road) near Santa Fe
• Serpent Mound, USA: Serpent Mound historic site (Ohio History Connection)
• Odessa, USA: Odessa Meteor Crater museum and trail (Texas)
• Upheaval Dome, USA: Canyonlands National Park (Island in the Sky, Upheaval Dome trail)

Meteor Crater in Arizona, 1.2 km across and 50,000 years old, is the best preserved on Earth and has a museum on the rim. Wolfe Creek in Western Australia and Kaali on the Estonian island of Saaremaa are other well-kept craters you can walk around.

Most meteorites come from strewn fields, not craters, and whether you may keep one depends on whose land it lands on

A meteoroid that breaks up in the air scatters stones over an oval strewn field a few kilometers to tens of kilometers long, with the smallest pieces at one end and the largest at the other. Most leave no crater. These are the best-known fields, and the rules for hunting them:

In the United States a meteorite belongs to the owner of the land it lands on. On land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, casual collecting for personal use is allowed without a permit, except in national monuments and national conservation areas. Collecting is banned in national parks and on National Park Service, Bureau of Reclamation and Fish and Wildlife Service land, and National Forest rules vary. Abroad, Argentina, Namibia, Oman, India and other countries restrict collecting or export, and in Antarctica, where the most meteorites are found, only science teams may collect under the Antarctic Treaty. Fresh falls are tracked by radar and doorbell cameras, and hunters often reach them within days.

Shatter cones and shocked quartz prove an impact; a round hole alone does not

An impact is confirmed only by evidence of pressures no volcano can produce: shatter cones (cone-shaped fractures in the rock), quartz grains with planar deformation features, high-pressure minerals such as coesite and stishovite, or fragments of the meteorite itself. Many round lakes and basins once thought to be craters have been ruled out, and new craters are confirmed most years, often from drill cores or gravity surveys of buried structures.

Earth has been hit as often as the Moon, but erosion, plate tectonics and oceans erase the scars

The Moon has hundreds of thousands of craters larger than 1 km; Earth, a bigger target, has fewer than 250 known. Wind, water and ice wear craters down, plate tectonics recycles the ocean floor every 200 million years or so, and the oceans cover 71% of the surface, where only a few craters are known. Most surviving craters are in the old, stable interiors of continents: Canada, Scandinavia, Australia and Russia. Asteroids · Meteor showers