The Sudbury Basin
What is it?

Sudbury sits in a huge oval-shaped depression in the rocky Canadian Shield. This giant crater holds one of the Earth's richest known deposits of nickel and copper.

The Sudbury Basin is 100km wide and 15 km deep. Most geologists agree that it was caused by a massive, 10 km-wide meteorite, travelling at 75 km per second, slamming into the Earth's crust about two billion years ago.

Sudbury started out as a camp for the workers who were building the Canadian Pacific Railway. It wasn't until 1856 that the nickel and copper ores were discovered in the area. The first mineral claims were staked in 1884.

This web site, Many Pennies From Heaven: Asteroid Impacts Render Riches, tells the story of how Sudbury was formed some 1.85 billion years ago, when the asteroid slammed into Earth with an impact said to have the equivalent energy of 10 billion Hiroshima bombs.

Click here to go back to the Sudbury Page