What is the biggest meteorite crater on earth?
by 
wickedwillie
ANSWERS: 4
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Because of erosion, it is difficult to to state which crater is the largest since some of them are relatively close in size. One of the biggest is the Sudbury crater in Ontario, Canada, which is 200-250 km in diameter. The crater in Vredefort, South Africa is 150-300 km. The Chicxulub crater in Mexico is about 175 km across.
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Note that some geologists think the gulf of Mexico is the crater from the impact that killed the dinosaurs. Some scientists speculate that the Pacific Basin is the result of a huge impact early in Earth's history, and the material ejected into orbit by said impact formed into the Moon. This theory, though little more than wild speculation was supported by moon rock samples, which proved to be remarkably similar to earth rocks.
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Some posted theories do not sound to me as if they take into account the affects of plate tectonics. First of all, the Gulf of Mexico already existed at the time of the meteor impact that killed the dinosaurs. Its crust is about 140 million years old. The dinosaurs died out only 65 million years ago. Had the impact that killed them also created the Gulf of Mexico, then it’s floor would be that age not over twice it. Second, the impact that is thought to have created the Moon happened so long ago that erosion and plate tectonics would have erased any remnants of the crater thus created.
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South Africa's 300-kilometer-wide Vredefort Crater. There a 10-kilometer-wide meteor slammed into Earth, in this case about 2 billion years ago, with a force sufficient to vaporize 70 cubic kilometers of rock. The Vredefort impact was so powerful that the rock beneath the impact point actually rebounded, creating a raised dome at the center of the crater and generating a ripple of ringed crater-rims that radiate out from the center. Such features rarely survive in Earth's tectonically active geosphere; however, the Vredefort crater was significant enough that traces of its multi-ring crater are still detectable. There is no larger confirmed impact crater on the planet.
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