Lying in northern Quebec, in Canada, close to the shoreline with Hudson Bay there are two impact craters that are of significant importance. At first sight, you may not actually believe that you are looking at large meteor craters, but when you analyze any photographs of these lakes more closely, there are definite tell-tale signs that help to reveal their origin.
The Clearwater Lakes impact craters are thought to have been gauged out around 290 million years ago. This would make them very old features indeed and would place this event in the Permian period of the Palaeozoic era. This would have been at a time before dinosaurs actually started to roam the planet and the fauna of the day was dominated by large and cumbersome ancient reptilian species of animals that have long since been extinct.
The two lakes that are of importance in this area are Clearwater Lake West and Clearwater Lake East. Both of which have derived their names through the fact that they are filled with exceptionally crystal clear water. The western lake measures a highly respectable 36 km in diameter and its eastern neighbour; 26 km.
Clearwater Lake West is geographically the most important, in terms of meteor impact craters. This is because, even after all of these millions of years, there are still islands within the crater that are indicative of a central uplift. Interestingly, these islands, which measure around 10 km across, are known to have their own local climatic variation due to the shear size of the lake they sit in. In actual fact, these islands are proven to have a more extreme Polar climate, when compared to the rest of the land in that area. Unfortunately, Clearwater Lake East does have a central uplift, but this has long since been submerged below the water.
It is almost certain that the Clearwater Lakes’ craters would have been formed simultaneously and this was most likely as a result of what is known as a binary asteroid. The asteroid or comet that was originally hurtling towards the planet would have broken up before impact (usually as a result of tidal forces) and this split the original body into two still extremely destructive sections.
Evidence for the catastrophic force of these impacts has been found on the central uplift islands of Clearwater Lake West. Melted strata has been recovered from this site and this is all the proof that could ever be needed to attest for the immense heat and energy that was the resulting factor of these collisions.
As far as the discovery of the Clearwater Lakes impact craters is concerned, the hypothesis for the lakes’ origin was revealed as far back as 1896, by the geologist and explorer Albert Peter Low, who was a member of the Geological Survey of Canada. But then, as we discussed above, the unmistakeable features of these lakes, especially with the central uplifts, would never have carried out eluding us for much longer.