Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Wolf Creek Crater

Formed about 2 million years ago when a nickel-iron meteorite crashed into the Kimberley plains. The 30 m-high walls of the crater are circular, 850 m in diameter at the top of the rim and 107 m deep, but there are 55 m of windblown sand in the bottom. The flat-topped, near uniform rim is composed of angular blocks of sandstone and quartzite. It is sparsely vegetated with spinifex.

The rim drops steeply to the crater floor, where the very porous gypsum floor has a large number of sinkholes. In the centre of the crater is a circular area of very fine grained sand where a variety of trees grow. Outside the circle the surface is coarser grained, the coarseness increasing towards the rim. The area outside the circle is vegetated with scattered spinifex and a small number of shrubs.

Sources & Further reading