The Sudbury impact
A ten-kilometre bolide strikes Ontario and leaves the richest nickel deposit on the planet.
- When
- Known to
- ± 5 million years
- Era
- Paleoproterozoic, Proterozoic
The Sudbury event, 1,849 million years ago, produced a crater originally around 250 kilometres across, now deformed into an elongated basin. The melt sheet it created concentrated nickel, copper and platinum-group metals, and the district has been mined continuously since 1883. It is one of only a handful of impacts whose economic consequences are still being felt.