The Spider
Crater appears to crawl out of Western Australia's past as a shattering reminder of cosmic impacts, seen by NASA's
Terra satellite.
The arid
landscape of Australia's Kimberly Region sports varying
shades of crimson, and a blue-black river meanders near the bottom of the
image. Dots of red along the river indicate lush but intermittent areas of
vegetation. The "spider" appears white in the center of the image from sunlight
on the ridges that form its legs.
Geologists
found shatter cones – cone-shaped, grooved rocks left in craters by meteor or asteroid
impacts – as well as highly deformed layers of sedimentary rock that provide
evidence of extraterrestrial impact. The Spider Crater also has areas where the
ground was pushed upwards within the 8 by 7 mile (13 by 11 kilometer) depression
left by the prehistoric event. If estimates are correct, the crater formed
sometime between 900 and 600 million years ago when Earth was undergoing a
series of global ice ages that gave its nickname "Snowball Earth."
— NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and SPACE.com Staff
Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS
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