Meteorite meets Earth!

Ever wonder what a meteorite impact crater looks like? As kids growing up we repeatedly heard about how a meteor most likely was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs and I'd always wondered what that must have looked like afterwords. Last summer I spent a few days exploring the Island in the Sky portion of Canyonlands National Park in Utah and while there I got the opportunity to see Upheaval Dome.

Upheaval Dome is the eroded remnants of the bottom of an impact crater, known to be younger than 170 million years old (although how much younger isn't known).

To give you some idea of the scale of these photos, the crater is roughly 3.1 miles (5 km for you metric folks) in diameter. Kinda made it difficult to get the entire thing in a single frame...

There had been some speculation that it might be a salt dome but NASA eventually investigated and discovered shocked quartz, which is apparently only formed by the pressures present in meteorite impacts and nuclear explosions. While Canyonlands is a rather rugged and stark landscape, the crater was far more rough and jagged looking and differed greatly from the land surrounding it. It was definitely unlike anything else I've come across in my travels, although I'm glad I wasn't there when it happened. Hope y'all enjoy!