T he Wilkes Land crater is a hole in the bedrock beneath East Antarctica's ice sheet measuring 315 miles (510 kilometers) across. Researchers have been trying to explain its existence since the ...

Name: Wilkes Land crater. Location: East Antarctica. Coordinates: 70°S 120°E. Why it's incredible: Evidence suggests it could be the greatest known impact crater on Earth.

The Wilkes Land crater is more than twice the size of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula, which marks the impact that may have ultimately killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

However, the scientist who first spotted the anomaly believes it is actually evidence of a massive impact crater. “This Wilkes Land impact is much bigger than the impact that killed the ...

The crater was found in what's known as the Wilkes Land region of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. "This is a strong candidate for the cause of the extinction," von Frese told The Associated Press in ...

The Wilkes Land crater is thought to be the site of impact of the asteroid that caused the Great Dying, about 250 million years ago, according to the research that was first reported in 2006.

The crater's location, in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia, suggests it might have instigated the breakup of the so-called Gondwana supercontinent, which pushed ...

Wilkes Land crater: The giant hole in East Antarctica's gravitational field likely caused by a meteorite The team modeled Antarctica's crustal thickness by looking for a seismic boundary called ...

image: Airborne radar image of land elevation in East Antarctica . Higher elevations appear red, purple, and white; the location of the Wilkes Land crater is circled (above center).