Amateur astronomer discovers 390-million-year-old meteorite impact crater in Quebec

A geological feature discovered by an amateur astronomer on Google Earth in northeastern Canada appears to be a 390-million-year-old meteorite impact crater, researchers said.

Joël Lapointe was planning a camping trip to Quebec’s Côte-Nord region in 2024 when he came across what seemed to be an impact crater on a Google Earth map, according to the Planetary Society, a space science nonprofit.

Lapointe reported the sighting to scientists at Aix-Marseille University in France, which informed a team that launched a scientific expedition to the scene to investigate the feature’s status as an impact crater in October 2025, according to Gordon Osinski, a professor of Earth Sciences at Western University in Canada and director of the university’s Impact Earth database, which maps impact craters and deposits across the globe.

One of four researchers on the expedition, Osinski said the finding was "serendipitous."

In Osinki’s experience, this is the first time a sighting reported by a member of the public has ever been established as an impact crater, he said.

The crater, named Uhackatik, is about 15.5 miles wide and was formed by a meteorite that crashed into Earth over 100 million years before the existence of dinosaurs, according to Osinski.

The name was decided upon in consultation with the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit, the people on whose land the crater was discovered, according to the Planetary Society.

Osinski said he and his team were “elated” upon discovering that the formation was likely an impact crater.

“I've visited many craters around the world and in Canada, and so I've got a lot of experience looking at them in the field,” Osinski said. “I was pretty convinced while we were there that it was an impact crater.”

To carry out the verification process, Osinski and his team took samples back to the lab to test for evidence of rock melting and shatter cones, which are distinct rock fractures that form from meteorite impact.

The crater’s discovery is slated to be presented at a Meteoritical Society conference in Germany next month, where Osinski said he expects to receive official confirmation from the scientific community of the formation’s status as an impact crater.

Impact craters are formed by sizable objects such as meteorites crashing into the Earth’s surface. Meteorites are deposits from meteoroids, planetary fragments traveling at extremely high speeds through space that get pulled into planets’ orbits.

When the crash occurs, the object vaporizes and shock waves are sent reverberating through the Earth’s crust.

The discovery and study of impact craters can give insights into the origin and evolution of Earth, deepen our understanding of the solar system and reveal information regarding the geological processes of planets.

There are only about 200 meteorite impact craters found on Earth, according to the Impact Crater database. They range in size from a few meters to 300 kilometers.

Impact craters are far more common on other planets and on the moon, which Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum estimates has over 2 million. This is due to Earth’s frequent shifting tectonic plates and weathering, which contribute to the removal of these craters.

“Every crater you get fills in a little more of our information about what turns out to be a very important process in the Solar System of impact cratering,” Bruce Betts, chief scientist at the Planetary Society, said.

The discovery of new impact craters helps scientists learn more about future meteorite threats to humans on Earth, as they can study objects’ speed and their impact by sampling craters, Betts said.