Overview
- An amateur, Joël Lapointe, spotted a ringed indentation on Google Maps and reported it to Impact Earth after noticing it while planning a trip in 2023, prompting specialist attention.
- A research expedition led by Western University visited the site in October 2025 and collected samples from the structure centered on Lake Marsal.
- Field geologists documented diagnostic impact features—visible shatter cones and well-preserved impact melt rock—that support an extraterrestrial impact interpretation.
- The roughly 25-kilometre structure has been provisionally named Uhackatik following consultation with the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit and is dated at about 390 million years old.
- Researchers say the find is rare because old craters are usually erased by erosion, it offers comparisons to other well-known sites for planetary studies, and formal peer review will follow the August presentation.