In one of the World’s most remote areas lies the Roter Kamm Crater in the hostile Namib Desert in southwest Namibia, Africa. In fact, this area is so remote, it has only been visited by a small number of geologists over the years and there are few, if any, expeditions being planned for the future.
The Roter Kamm crater was thought to have been created between 3.7 to 5.0 million years ago. This would place this event into the Pliocene, with regards geological timing of the Earth’s history.
The crater is around 2.5km in diameter, making it a medium-sized impact crater. The present maximum depth from the crater floor to the top of the rim is 130m. As the Roter Kamm crater is located in a sandy desert, it is thought that around 100m worth of sand has deposited onto the crater floor, to raise the original height. This would mean that the original crater depth was likely to be in the region of 230m.
Roter Kamm crater is located some 80km north of Oranjemund, in Namibia. There are very few speculations as to the size of the meteor that would have been responsible for such an impact site, but some estimates anticipate that the overall size would have been equivalent to that of a large vehicle.
Observations from the Roter Kamm crater have helped to prove that during the impact itself, vast amounts of heat energy would have been generated and this was more than sufficient to at least partially melt some of the rocks within the crater itself. The force would have been tremendous, as the meteor crashed into this part of the Earth’s crust and none of us could ever imagine the ferocity of such an event. Neither would we ever wish to.
When you view photographs of the Roter Kamm crater, Namibia, you may be forgiven for thinking that you are looking at a small section of the planet Mars. The sands are of an orangey-red color in the Namib Desert and this definitely gives the impression of a Martian surface, rather than that of our own planet. Furthermore, we are far more accustomed to seeing meteor impact craters on other planets as these are not so prone to the geological forces that constantly renew our planet’s surface.
If it were not for the space shuttle Endeavour, our knowledge of this breathtaking impact crater would probably be far less than it is today. The photographs that have been taken from space provide us with an excellent and detailed glimpse of the Roter Kamm crater and this helps us to answer some of the questions which would otherwise have carried on eluding us.
Christopher L. Shelby, M.D.