Wolfe Creek Crater | Universe Today

Written by Jerry Coffey

Wolfe Creek Crater is a huge crater on the very edge a little known desert in Western Australia. It is 853 m in diameter and 46 m deep. The crater is thought to have been twice as deep when it was formed, but has filled in with sand over the centuries. Very little has been found of the meteoric material that formed the crater mostly some very worn shale balls have been the sum total of it. The shale balls are made of iron oxide and have weighed as much as 250 kg. The walls are made of rock, mostly quartzite.

It is thought that the meteor that formed Wolfe Creek Crater hit with about 50,000 tonnes of force. The impact event is believed to be less than 300,000 years old. The crater was not discovered until 1947. An aerial survey was under way when it was spotted.

Wolfe Creek Crater gets its name for a local prospector and explorer named Robert Wolfe who founded the the town of Halls Creek and discovered the river that runs nearby, Wolfe Creek, which lends its name to the crater itself. The crater has quite a bit more vegetation than the surrounding area because of the water that is under the soil. The water is quite putrid and humans do not drink it.

Very little else is known about the crater than what I have already written. The impact event itself is not known to have caused a massive die off of Pleistocene animals or caused an world changing events. It is significant because it is in such a remote area. The desert around it is untouched and nearly unexplored. There are truly unexplored frontiers on our own planet that await us and the area around Wolfe Creek Crater proves that.

Here are links to what Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica have to say about Wolfe Creek Crater. There are other articles on Universe Today about great craters and Astronomy Cast has a good episode to go with this topic.

Filed under: Astronomy