Amateur Sleuth Finds Huge Meteorite Crater in Canada
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Joël Lapointe was perusing Google Maps, plotting hiking routes for a camping trip, when he noticed something strange on the terrain.
It looked to be a large indentation spanning more than 15 miles across and forming a ring in northeastern Canada. To his eye, it seemed like a meteorite crater. As an amateur astrologer, Lapointe was cautious and told local press that he told himself: "You haven’t discovered anything, Joël, it’s not possible, they must already know about this.”
But the giant pit was not in any of the crater databases Lapointe searched through, so he sent his hunch to experts. And, lo and behold, researchers have now confirmed that it is indeed a large impact crater, located in the Côte-Nord region of Quebec, reports the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Lapointe's hunch was correct and a meteor had indeed smacked into this landscape around 390 million years ago.
The key evidence came once Lapointe’s theory reached Gordon Osinski, a planetary geologist at Canada’s Western University. Osinski - who manages the university’s Impact Earth website, which hosts a database of craters - was initially doubtful about the discovery. But, nonetheless, he co-led an expedition to the potential impact site to investigate the situation. Once there, they identified shatter cones - cone-shaped patterns, caused as shock waves travel through rock, that are angled toward the point of impact. They also discovered large areas of impact melt rock, which is produced from the intense pressure and temperature of an asteroid or meteorite strike.
The discovery, says Osinski, is likely among the biggest craters found in recent memory. Only about 200 meteorite craters have been identified around the world, and just one or two are discovered each year.
It has been named Uhackatik and is the latest addition to Canada’s long list of confirmed impact craters. Perhaps surprisingly, and a good one for a pub quiz, Canada has more known meteorite craters than any other country.
For his part, Lapointe is thrilled about the role he has played in the crater’s revelation. “It’s not every day that an ordinary citizen finds a 390-million-year-old crater,” he told Radio-Canada. “I encourage everyone to not ignore intuition or an observation, even if it isn’t part of your field of expertise.”
