Australian scientists confirm meteorite impact crater in Western Australia

In 2007 a geologist identified a nearly perfect 260-metre-wide circle in the Ophthalmia Range of Western Australia while reviewing satellite images. Subsequent field work by the Geological Survey of Western Australia, in partnership with Atlas Iron, included a deep drill that reached the underlying bedrock and recovered core samples. The core displayed a sediment fill overlying fractured rhyolite and contained platinum-group element ratios and high nickel levels indicative of extraterrestrial material.

These findings, together with the crater’s morphology—a rim rising roughly 30 metres—support an impact origin by a meteorite likely a few metres across. The structure, dubbed “Hickman Crater,” is placed in the late Pleistocene, making it one of the youngest known impact sites in Australia. The 2012 drilling is notable as possibly the first scientific borehole into a sub-kilometre simple crater in the country.