About 50,000 years ago, a rock fragment broke away from the asteroid belt and hurtled towards earth.
The rock, composed of nickel and iron, was about 50 meters across and weighed 300,000 tons.
It was travelling at 12.8 kilometers per second.
Upon entering the earths atmosphere it became a giant fireball that streaked across the North American sky.
When the dust settled, what remained was a crater over a kilometer across and 750 feet deep.
The impact occurred during the last ice age, a time when the Arizona landscape was cooler and wetter.
The area was an open grassland dotted with woodlands inhabited by woolly mammoths and giant ground sloths.
When the ice age ended, the climate changed and dried, preserving the crater from further erosion.
It is also referred to simply as “Meteor Crater”.
The origin of this crater has been a source of controversy for many years.
Work on the mine was halted.
Devastated by the loss, Daniel Barringer died of a massive heart attack on November 30, 1929.
It was not until 1960 that later research by Eugene Merle Shoemaker confirmed Barringer’s hypothesis.
Shoemaker’s discovery is considered the first definitive proof of an extraterrestrial impact on the Earth’s surface.
Meteor Crater is today a popular tourist attraction privately owned by the Barringer family through the Barringer Crater Company.
