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The Popigai crater in Siberia, Russia is tied with Manicouagan Reservoir as the 4th largest impact crater on Earth. A large bolide impact created the crater, 100 km in diameter, about 35 million years ago during the late Eocene epoch.
The Popigai impact crater was possibly simultaneous with the Chesapeake Bay and Toms Canyon impacts, but evidence varies.
The impactor in this event has been identified as either an eight-kilometer diameter chondrite asteroid, or a five-kilometer diameter stony asteroid.
The shock pressures from the impact instantaneously transformed graphite in the ground into diamonds within a 13.6 kilometer radius of ground zero. No exact count nor measure of caratage has been made available, but it is estimated that this one impact formed more diamonds than have been formed by the Earth's own processes.
Popigai is the best example yet of the formation of a crater of this type. Three other craters are larger, but they are either buried (Chicxulub), strongly deformed (Sudbury), or deformed and severely eroded (Vredefort).
External links
"Popigai crater"