This list includes all 60 confirmed impact structures in North America in the Earth Impact Database (EID). These features were caused by the collision of large meteorites or comets with the Earth. For eroded or buried craters, the stated diameter typically refers to an estimate of original rim diameter, and may not correspond to present surface features.
| Name | Location | Diameter (km) | Age (Ma/millions) | Coordinates |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicxulub | Yucatan | 170 | 64.98 ± 0.05 | 21°20′N89°30′W / 21.333°N 89.500°W |
The following craters are officially considered "unconfirmed" because they are not listed in the Earth Impact Database. Due to stringent requirements regarding evidence and peer-reviewed publication, newly discovered craters or those with difficulty collecting evidence generally are known for some time before becoming listed. However, entries on the unconfirmed list could still have an impact origin disproven.
Amguid is a meteorite crater in Algeria.
The Middlesboro crater is a meteorite crater in Kentucky, United States. It is named after the city of Middlesborough, which today occupies much of the crater.
Neugrund is a meteorite crater in Estonia. It is 8 km (5.0 mi) in diameter and was previously estimated to have been formed in the Ordovician around 470 Ma, with later research revealing a possible Cambrian origin. The crater is at the bottom of the sea and is not exposed at the surface. Boulders of gneissic breccia found on the coast of Osmussaar, a nearby island, are believed to have been thrown there by the explosion. It has been proposed that the Neugrund crater was created during the Ordovician meteor event when a hypothetical large asteroid transferred directly into a resonant orbit with Jupiter, which shifted its orbit to intercept Earth.
Roter Kamm is a meteorite crater, located in the Sperrgebiet, within the Namibian section of the Namib Desert, approximately 80 kilometres (50 mi) north of Oranjemund and 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) southwest of Aurus Mountain in the ǁKaras Region. The crater is 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) in diameter and is 130 metres (430 ft) deep. The age is estimated at 4.81 ± 0.5 Ma, placing it in the Pliocene. The crater is exposed at the surface, but its original floor is covered by sand deposits at least 100 metres (330 ft) thick.
The Wetumpka impact crater is the only confirmed impact crater in Alabama, United States. It is located east of downtown Wetumpka in Elmore County. The crater is 4.7 miles (7.6 km) in diameter, and its age is estimated to be about 85 million years, based on fossils found in the youngest disturbed deposits, which belong to the Mooreville Chalk Formation.
The 38th parallel structures, also known as the 38th parallel lineament, are a series of seven circular depressions or deformations stretching 700 kilometres (430 mi) across southern Illinois and Missouri and into eastern Kansas, in the United States, at a latitude of roughly 38 degrees north. Estimated at 300 million years old, two are believed to be impact events from meteorites, but other structures are possibly remnants of volcanos.
Kebira Crater is the name given to a circular topographic feature that was identified in 2007 by Farouk El-Baz and Eman Ghoneim using satellite imagery, Radarsat-1, and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data in the Sahara desert. This feature straddles the border between Egypt and Libya. The name of this feature is derived from the Arabic word for "large", and also from its location near the Gilf Kebir region in southwest Egypt. Based solely on their interpretations of the remote sensing data, they argue that this feature is an exceptionally large, double-ringed, extraterrestrial impact crater. They suggest that the crater's original appearance has been obscured by wind and water erosion over time. Finally, they speculated that this feature might be the source of the yellow-green silica glass fragments, known as "Libyan desert glass", that can be found across part of Egypt's Libyan Desert. They neither conducted any fieldwork at this feature nor studied any samples collected from it. However, the Kebira Crater is currently not listed in the Earth Impact Database. Field trips to investigate the feature have found no supporting evidence. The "central uplift" clearly retains the horizontal bedding of the surrounding sandstone tableland, providing clear evidence against a possible impact origin.
The Earth Impact Database is a database of confirmed impact structures or craters on Earth. It was initiated in 1955 by the Dominion Observatory, Ottawa, under the direction of Carlyle S. Beals. Since 2001, it has been maintained as a not-for-profit source of information at the Planetary and Space Science Centre at the University of New Brunswick, Canada.
Ramgarh crater, also known as Ramgarh structure, Ramgarh Dome and Ramgarh astrobleme, is a meteor impact crater of 3.5 kilometres (2.2 mi) diameter in Kota plateau of Vindhya range located adjacent to Ramgarh village in Mangrol tehsil of Baran district in Rajasthan state of India. When formally accepted as the third crater in India, its diameter size would be between the two already confirmed craters in India - Dhala in Madhya Pradesh with 14 km diameter and Lonar in Buldhana district of Maharashtra with 1.8 km diameter.
The Impact Field Studies Group (IFSG) was a scientific organization emphasizing geologic field research of suspected and confirmed sites of impact craters and impact structures. The group is composed of researchers, professionals and students involved in study of impact sites. IFSG's web site is hosted by the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Traces of Catastrophe: A Handbook of Shock-Metamorphic Effects in Terrestrial Meteorite Impact Structures is a book written by Bevan M. French of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a comprehensive technical reference on the science of impact craters. It was published in 1998 by the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), which is part of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA). It was originally available in hard copy from LPI, but is now only available as a portable document format (PDF) e-book free download.
The Tunnunik impact crater, formerly known as the Prince Albert Impact Crater, is a recently confirmed meteorite impact crater. It is located on Prince Albert Peninsula in the northwestern part of Victoria Island in Canada's Northwest Territories.
