The Vredefort Dome, near the town of Vredefort in the Free State province of South Africa, is the deeply eroded remnant of the largest and oldest verified impact structure on Earth. It formed roughly 2.02 billion years ago when a large asteroid struck the region, producing a crater originally estimated at 250 to 300 kilometers across. Billions of years of subsequent erosion have removed the original crater bowl entirely, leaving exposed at the surface a raised, roughly circular dome of deeply deformed and structurally uplifted basement rock at the impact structure's center, including shatter cones and other shock-metamorphic features that are the diagnostic evidence of its impact origin. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005.
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Protected StatusUNESCO World Heritage Site 1 Connections
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Source Wikidata: Vredefort Dome
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Vredefort impact structure, Wikipedia
ConservationQuote, Conservation
In 2005, the Vredefort Dome was added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites for its geologic interest.
Wikidata: Vredefort Dome
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