The “Trou du Météore": The crater at the “Domaine du Météore" winery really was caused by a meteorite impact. Photo Credit: Frank Brenker, Goethe University Frankfurt |
With the aim of creating an appealing brand, the name of the “Domaine du Météore" winery near the town of Béziers in Southern France points to a local peculiarity: one of its vineyards lies in a round, 200-meter-wide depression that resembles an impact crater. By means of rock and soil analyses, scientists led by cosmochemist Professor Frank Brenker from Goethe University Frankfurt have now established that the crater was indeed once formed by the impact of an iron-nickel meteorite. In doing so, they have disproved a scientific opinion almost 60 years old, because of which the crater was never examined more closely from a geological perspective.
Countless meteorites have struck Earth in the past and shaped the history of our planet. It is assumed, for example, that meteorites brought with them a large part of its water. The extinction of the dinosaurs might also have been triggered by the impact of a very large meteorite.
Meteorite craters that are still visible today are rare because most traces of the celestial bodies have long since disappeared again. This is due to erosion and shifting processes in the Earth's crust, known as plate tectonics. The “Earth Impact Database" lists just 190 such craters worldwide. In the whole of Western Europe, only three were previously known: Rochechouart in Aquitaine, France, the Nördlinger Ries between the Swabian Alb and the Franconian Jura, and the Steinheim Basin near Heidenheim in Baden-Württemberg (both in Germany). Thanks to millions of years of erosion, however, for laypersons the three impact craters are hardly recognizable as such.