Lake Manicouagan, northern Québec.
"The meterorite that created this crater hit so hard that ejecta ended
up... in Great-Britain! This impact, 214 millions years old, has probably done a
lot of damage. It is believed it was a 5-km meterorite.
Biologists have noticed a massive extinction of animal and plant species which
occured about 200 million years ago. It is after that exctinction event that
reptiles, and among them the dinosaurs, could establish themselves as the
dominant species on our planet.
Today, lake Manicouagan is the scar of this prehistoric cataclysm. The
ring-shaped lake is in fact a crater, 100 km in diameter. The crater, like the
rest of Québec territory, has been subjected to intense erosion following the
passing of glaciers. Lake Manicouagan, through the river of the same name,
empties into the St-Lawrence river 483 km further south. It is on this powerful
river that Hydro Québec has built several hydroelectric powerplants, one of
which being the world's largest multi-arch dam, the Daniel-Johnson dam (aka
Manic-5)."
source (in French):
[
www.republiquelibre.org]
Note -- This photo is also available, larger and in more colors and spectra, on
the NASA Earth Observation site.
