Sudbury Basin facts for kids
| Sudbury Structure | |
NASA World Wind satellite image of the Sudbury astrobleme
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| Impact crater/structure | |
|---|---|
| Confidence | Confirmed |
| Diameter | 130 km (81 mi) |
| Age | 1849 Ma Paleoproterozoic |
| Exposed | Yes |
| Drilled | Yes |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 46°36′N 81°11′W / 46.600°N 81.183°W |
| Country | Canada |
| Province | Ontario |
 Location in Canada
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The Sudbury Basin is a major geologic structure in Ontario, Canada. It is the second-largest verified impact crater on Earth, as well as one of the oldest.
The basin is on the Canadian Shield in the city of Greater Sudbury, Ontario. The Sudbury Basin is referred to locally as "The Valley". The urban core of the former city of Sudbury lies on the southern outskirts of the basin.
The Sudbury Basin is near a number of other geological structures. None of the structures are directly related to each other in the sense of coming from the same geophysical processes.
Contents
Formation
The Sudbury basin was formed by a strike from a bolide about 10–15 km (6.2–9.3 mi) in diameter. It occurred 1.849 billion years ago in the Palaeoproterozoic era.
Debris from the impact was scattered over an area of 1,600,000 km2 (620,000 sq mi) and traveled over 800 km (500 mi) away — rock fragments ejected by the impact have been found as far as Minnesota.
With such a large impact, debris was most likely scattered globally, but has since been worn away. Its present size is believed to be a smaller portion of a 250 km (160 mi) round crater that the bolide originally created.
Subsequent geological processes have deformed the crater into the current smaller oval shape. Sudbury Basin would then be the second-largest crater on Earth, after the 300 km (190 mi) Vredefort crater in South Africa, and larger than the 170 km (110 mi) Chicxulub crater in Yucatán, Mexico.
Structure
The full extent of the Sudbury Basin is 62 km (39 mi) long, 30 km (19 mi) wide and 15 km (9.3 mi) deep, although the modern ground surface is much shallower.
Images for kids
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Geological map of Sudbury Basin
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Shatter cone from Sudbury Impact Structure, Cleveland Museum of Natural History
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Rich ore sample from Sudbury, collected in 1932: Pentlandite - Chalcopyrite - Pyrrhotite
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See also
In Spanish: Cuenca de Sudbury para niños
