Wolf Creek Meteorite Crater

April 23, 2004

Wfcr

Provided by: Mr. Moose
Summary authors & editors: Jim Foster; Mr. Moose

Wolfe Creek meteorite crater lies on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia, in a remote and forsaken desert setting. Although it has long been known to Aboriginal people, who called it Kandimalal, this crater was only discovered by Europeans in 1947. From the air, it's quite spectacular -- an anomaly in an otherwise uniform desert, as far as the eye can see. The Wolfe Creek meteorite crater is the second largest crater in the world from which fragments of a meteorite have been collected. It's approximately 880 m (2887 ft) across and almost circular. The floor of the crater is about 60 m (197 ft) below the rim, and the porous gypsum found near the crater's center supports reasonably large trees and contains a number of sinkholes. Note that when you look at this photo using averted vision, it seems to peer back at you like a huge green eye.

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