Serpent Mound Impact Crater

Serpent Mound sits within a large crater almost nine miles across. The bedrock in the center of the crater has been thrust upward to between 400 and 900 feet above its original position, while an outer ring of bedrock has dropped from at least 200 feet to as much as 800 feet. In all, about seven cubic miles of rock were smashed. The Serpent Mound crater does not look much like other known impact craters, such as Meteor Crater in Arizona, but millions of years of erosion have erased many of the surface features typical of such craters. Recent research has shown that the area does indeed represent the remnants of a large crater from a meteorite impact. Whether the people who built Serpent Mound chose this location because they recognized that it was a meteorite crater is probably unknown.

Ohio · United States