Vredefort Crater Is The Largest And Oldest Impact Crater On Earth

Question: What is the largest crater on our planet?

Answer: Vredefort crater in South Africa, also called the Vredefort Dome is the oldest and largest impact crater on Earth. Dating back 2,023 million years the crater has a radius of 185 miles (300 kilometers) across. It was created by an asteroid that was only 10 kilometers in width.

Vredefort Dome bears witness to the world’s greatest known single energy release event, which had devastating global effects including, according to some scientists, major evolutionary changes. It provides critical evidence of the Earth’s geological history and is crucial to understanding of the evolution of the planet.

Despite the importance of impact sites to the planet’s history, geological activity on the Earth’s surface has led to the disappearance of evidence from most of them, and Vredefort is the only example to provide a full geological profile of an astrobleme below the crater floor. This crater was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005.

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Source:

Live Science

Unesco

NASA