Explore the evidence of Meteorite impacts in Western Australia.
Check this link if you’re interested in the latest pictures of meteorite impacts.
Hickman Crater
In July 2007, Arthur Hickman (GSWA) was using Google Earth to view the area north of Newman when he discovered a circular feature resembling a well-preserved meteorite impact crater (Fig. 1). The feature is 260 m in diameter and consists of a raised rim that encircles a flat densely vegetated floor. The inner slopes of the rim are very steep whereas the outer slopes are gradual. Arthur emailed images of the feature to Dr Andrew Glikson (ANU) for a second opinion, and Andrew agreed that it resembled an impact crater. In August, Andrew made a field inspection of the crater (Fig. 2), and quickly sent back a radio message that field evidence had convinced him that it was indeed a meteorite impact crater; he proposed that it be named ‘Hickman Crater’. Arthur visited the crater in May 2008, and made additional observations, all of which supported a meteorite impact origin.
The morphology of the crater strongly resembles that of meteorite impact craters elsewhere in the world, one of the most famous and best preserved being the Barringer Crater in Arizona. The rim of Hickman Crater stands about 30 m above its floor, and is covered in angular impact ejecta (blocks of country rock that were blasted out by the meteorite impact). The ejecta deposits extend up to 300 m outwards from the rim, and form an unconsolidated layer containing jumbled angular blocks of rhyolite, chert, and BIF, some as large as 2 m across. The surfaces of the blocks and rock outcrops along the inner wall of the crater show features consistent with a meteorite impact: radiating lineations (indicating shock); slickensides (formed by shear); and hydrothermal goethite-quartz veins (indicating post-impact hydrothermal circulation). Bedding of the in-situ country rocks is uplifted on the inside of the rim, a feature formed by rebound immediately after impact. A youthful age of the impact, likely late Pleistocene (104 to 105 years old), is indicated by damming of the drainage of a south-southeast-flowing creek by the ejecta on southern rim.
Wolfe Creek meteorite crater
Wolfe Creek crater is a beautifully preserved simple impact crater and the main attraction of the Wolfe Creek National Park. The crater is a popular tourist destination, reached from the Tanami Road, about 145 km south of Halls Creek in WA’s remote southeast Kimberley region. The crater has a diameter of about 880 m with the crater floor now about 55 m below the rim, although at impact it was probably about 150 m deep. A 50-m diameter meteorite would be needed to produce such an impact.
View or download Record 2003/10 Wolfe Creek meteorite crater.
Woodleigh
A huge impact crater — the largest discovered on the Australian continent — lies about 50 km east of Hamelin Pool in the Southern Carnarvon Basin. Unfortunately it is buried by some 600 m of sedimentary rocks. Geologists at the Geological Survey of Western Australia have studied the impact crater by drilling, magnetic work, and gravity surveying (see gravity image of the structure).
View or download GSWA Record 2001/6 and Report 79 for more information on Woodleigh.
