How Big Is the Chicxulub Crater? The Largest Impact Craters on Earth

About 66 million years ago an asteroid roughly 10 km wide struck what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. It left the Chicxulub crater, estimated at 150 to 200 km across and now buried under about a kilometer of younger rock. The impact is widely linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs. A 200 km circle covers about 31,000 km², more than the whole of neighboring Belize.

The Chicxulub crater in place on the Yucatán Peninsula and Belize beside it at the same latitude.

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The largest impact craters

Crater	Where	Diameter (about)	Age (about)
Vredefort	South Africa	170 to 300 km	2.02 billion years
Chicxulub	Mexico	150 to 200 km	66 million years
Sudbury	Canada	130 km	1.85 billion years
Popigai	Russia	100 km	36 million years
Manicouagan	Canada	85 to 100 km	215 million years
Acraman	Australia	90 km	590 million years
Chesapeake Bay	United States	85 km	35 million years
Meteor Crater	United States	1.2 km	50,000 years

Old craters are worn down or buried, so their original size is an estimate, and published figures differ. In TrueSize each crater is a circle of its published diameter around its published center: the estimated original rim, not what can be seen on the ground today. Where estimates vary widely, as for Vredefort, the card gives the range.

The five largest craters side by side on the equator, from Vredefort (left) to Manicouagan.

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What you can still see

Most giant craters are hard to spot. Vredefort has worn down to a ring of hills around a central dome. Manicouagan in Quebec is easy to see from space: a ring-shaped lake about 70 km wide fills its old trough. Small young craters keep their shape best. Meteor Crater in Arizona is about 1.2 km across and 170 m deep, and India's Lonar Lake and Estonia's Kaali craters are also easy to visit.

Try it yourself

1. Search for "Chicxulub" ("Search for a country or region…") and add the crater.
2. Search for a country or region you know, add it and drag it beside the crater at the same latitude.
3. Load every crater at once with Advanced → Load → Load All Impact Craters, and compare them with your own city or region.

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