In 2024, amateur astronomer Joël Lapointe was scouting satellite maps for a camping spot in Quebec’s remote Côte-Nord region when a peculiar circular feature near Lake Marsal caught his eye. Two years later, scientists have confirmed it as a massive impact crater roughly 390 million years old and about 25 kilometers (16 miles) across — the largest such discovery since the 31-km Hiawatha structure in 2018.
Planetary geologist Gordon Osinski of Western University led a team that found shatter cones — distinctive cone-shaped rock fractures formed only under the intense shock pressures of a meteorite impact — at numerous outcrops across the site. Previous geological surveys had misidentified the local breccia rocks as evidence of a volcanic structure called a diatreme.
The crater, named Uhackatik after consultations with the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit, includes a central uplift and high cliffs displaying columnar jointing. A comparable impact in modern Quebec would cause regional devastation capable of wiping out major cities and triggering global climate effects. The discovery adds to Earth’s roughly 200 confirmed impact structures, with hundreds more believed to remain hidden.
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