Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Cooper Basin Impact Crater

Evidence of an impact crater, at least 80 km wide, has been found in the Cooper Basin in Queensland near the South Australian border. The actual size of the crater has still to be determined, but it seems likely it may be as large as 160 km or more. The size of the minimum impact crater is such that it may have triggered an extinction event, though not on the scale of the impact event that occurred in Mexico 65 million years ago. Evidence for the impact has been found in the form of shocked quartz. The only known mechanism for the form of quartz are large impacts.

The Woodleigh Crater, that was formed about 360 million years ago in Western Australia, is between 60 and 160 km in diameter is believed to have been caused by an asteroid of about 6-12 km diameter. 

Sources & Further reading

Barton, Gareth, 27 October 2010, Cosmos Magazine