{"id":815101,"date":"2026-07-20T22:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T22:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/815101\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T22:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T22:54:13","slug":"pit-turns-out-to-be-390-million-year-old-meteor-crater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/815101\/","title":{"rendered":"Pit turns out to be 390-million-year-old meteor crater"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amateur astronomer Jo\u00ebl Lapointe stumbled upon what he thought looked like a suspicious pit in Quebec’s C\u00f4te-Nord region while he was wandering with his Google Maps cursor in 2024.<\/p>\n

He was simply trying to plan his camping vacation when he spotted something unexpected on his screen \u2014 what researchers recently confirmed is a previously unidentified, 390-million-year-old meteor crater.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quite an exciting discovery,\u201d said Gordon Osinski, a planetary geology professor at Western University, who was among the four-person team that confirmed the crater by travelling to the site in 2025.<\/p>\n

Osinski, who runs Impact Earth \u2014 a website dedicated to verified impacted sites \u2014 is used to getting a lot of emails from the public signalling potential new craters. Many are false alarms.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just goes to show, while nine out of 10, or 99 out of 100 might not be, there could always still be that one that will surprise you,\u201d he said. “This is the first for me.”<\/p>\n

Next month, in Germany, Osinski will present the team\u2019s research abstract at the annual congress of the Meteoritical Society \u2014 an international organization dedicated to promoting research in planetary sciences.<\/p>\n

A difficult, rugged, field expedition<\/p>\n

Following Lapointe\u2019s discovery which made headlines across the province in 2024<\/a>, Osinski and J\u00e9r\u00f4me Gattacceca, a geologist at the European Centre for Research and Teaching in Environmental Geosciences, set out for the crater.<\/p>\n

Over five days, the team gathered photos and samples to bring back to labs in both France and Ontario, for study.<\/p>\n

\"https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/ais\/0cd208ba-2ad3-4606-9201-9d1b2b6fa003,1783972063137\/full\/max\/0\/default.jpg?im=Crop%2Crect%3D%280%2C0%2C4032%2C3024%29%3BResize%3D1280\"<\/p>\n

Gordon Osinski, left, pictured with his team of researchers, Anthony Lagain, J\u00e9r\u00f4me Gattacceca and Yoann Quesne, while visiting the site of the crater in Quebec in 2025. (Submitted to the CBC by Gordon Osinski)<\/p>\n

But getting to the site was far from simple.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of the hardest field expeditions I’ve ever done,\u201d said Osinski, who has worked “all over the world, six continents.”<\/p>\n

The terrain was rugged and overgrown, he said. And the float plane bringing them in had to leave the team 50 metres offshore \u2014 forcing them to wade to land with their gear, said Osinski with a laugh.<\/p>\n

\"https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/ais\/9476738e-f382-447f-9997-e0bcc9e079f5,1783972536804\/full\/max\/0\/default.jpg?im=Crop%2Crect%3D%280%2C0%2C5712%2C4284%29%3BResize%3D1280\"<\/p>\n

Researchers set out for the crater using satellite images and over five days gathered photos and samples to bring back to the lab for study. (Submitted to the CBC by Gordon Osinski)<\/p>\n

Team discovered impact melt rock, shatter cones<\/p>\n

There are only about 200 known meteor craters in the world, and at 25 kilometres in diameter, this one is likely among the biggest discovered in a number of years, said Osinski.<\/p>\n

On the trip, the team found big cliffs of what Osinski said is impact melt rock \u2013 created from the temperature and pressure of an impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can melt literally tens of cubic kilometres of the Earth’s crust when you get a big enough asteroid hitting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/ais\/bd0e6633-adae-44bd-8e6e-6d954fda6584,1783972363317\/full\/max\/0\/default.jpg?im=Crop%2Crect%3D%280%2C0%2C3024%2C4032%29%3BResize%3D1280\"<\/p>\n

Gordon Osinski holding an impact melt rock. It’s created from the temperature and pressure of an impact. (Submitted to the CBC by Gordon Osinski)<\/p>\n

He had initially assumed the team wouldn\u2019t find this kind of evidence in the eroded crater.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we found some really spectacular examples,\u201d he said. \u201cI’m still quite blown away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another goal of the expedition was to identify shatter cones \u2014 traces left in the rock by shock waves that are found exclusively in impact craters or at nuclear bomb test sites, as explained by J\u00e9r\u00f4me Gattacceca in an interview with Radio-Canada.<\/p>\n

\"https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/ais\/8992730a-0cc6-435a-93b0-972ccd2c1d65,1783972350122\/full\/max\/0\/default.jpg?im=Crop%2Crect%3D%280%2C0%2C4284%2C5712%29%3BResize%3D1280\"<\/p>\n

The researchers found shatter cones on the second day of the group’s mission. (Submitted to the CBC by Gordon Osinski)<\/p>\n

The geologist found them on the second day of the group\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n

The field research allowed them to sample and identify rocks formed during the impact, enabling them to date the crater at 390 million years old \u2014 an age that’s relatively average in geology, said Gattacceca.<\/p>\n

Discovery is a ‘beautiful lesson,’ said geologist<\/p>\n

Gattacceca said this case is a “beautiful lesson that our planet, even though we have studied it a lot, still holds beautiful surprises and continues to amaze us.”<\/p>\n

In an email sent to Radio-Canada, Lapointe, the amateur astronomer, said he was very happy with the news that the crater had been confirmed.<\/p>\n

“It’s not every day that an ordinary citizen finds a 390-million-year-old crater,” he wrote to Radio-Canada. He also saluted the choice of the crater’s name, called Uhackatik, which was established in consultation with the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI encourage everyone to not ignore intuition or an observation, even if it isn\u2019t part of your field of expertise,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

RELATED VIDEO: Origin of mystery crater solved 43 million years later?<\/p>\n

Header image: In 2024, someone identified what looked to be an impact crater located about 100 kilometres north of Magpie, Que., as seen in this image from Google Earth. But researchers recently confirmed it was in fact a 390-million-year-old meteor crater \u2014 never before identified. (Submitted to the CBC by Gordon Osinski) . This article was written for the CBC<\/a> by Rachel Watts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amateur astronomer Jo\u00ebl Lapointe stumbled upon what he thought looked like a suspicious pit in Quebec’s C\u00f4te-Nord region…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":815102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":["post-815101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/815102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}