Meteor craters of Iowa

Streaming video - 2019

Did you know that there are two huge meteor craters right here in Iowa? Dr. Ray Anderson, Adjunct Professor, UI Earth & Environmental Studies Department, will discuss what happened 74 million years ago when a meteor over one mile in diameter, weighing about 10 billion tons and traveling about 45,000 miles per hour, blasted through the atmosphere and blasted a 5-mile deep hole at what is today the town of Mason, about 50 miles northwest of Ames. But this wasn't Iowa's first meteor impact. About 469 million years ago numerous fragments of a fractured asteroid crashed to Earth, one fragment in northeast Iowa at what is now Decorah. These impacts may have contributed to the great Ordovicaian biodiversification event, one of the la...rgest mass extinction events on planet Earth! more