'Exceptionally rare' meteorite impact crater found in the Twin Cities metro - Bring Me The News

An exceptionally rare meteorite impact crater has been discovered in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota, and the size of it suggests that had it struck today, it would've wiped out a massive chunk of the Twin Cities.

The crater was discovered several hundred feet underground by researchers with the University of Minnesota’s Minnesota Geological Survey (MGS).

It's the first known impact crater in Minnesota and the 191st known crater in the world. .

The crater is approximately 2 miles across and covers 4 square miles, in addition to a larger area outside of the central crater that if linked – more studies are needed to confirm it – would make the size closer to 10 square miles, which is bigger than the town of Hutchinson (population 14,000) and about the same size as Fridley (population 27,700). .

The shockwave leveled more than 80 million trees over an area of about 830 square miles. That meteor, estimated to be about 50 meters in size, was smaller than the meteorite that hit Inver Grove Heights. .

Julia Steenberg, a geologist at the University of Minnesota who helped discover the impact crater, told Bring Me The News that calculations suggest the size of the meteorite that hit Inver Grove Heights was anywhere from 150-600 meters – the size of several football fields. .

The U of M research team made the discovery in Inver Grove Heights while looking at subsurface samples as part of a routine Dakota County mapping project.

Overall, the size of the impact crater in Inver Grove Heights is somewhat small compared to the 190 other known impact sites around the world.

The one in Inver Grove Heights is comparable to craters discovered in Decorah, Iowa and Rock Elm, Wisconsin. .

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