Natural History Museum Vienna

Dr Ludovic Ferrière is a geologist and expert on meteorites and impact craters. He is chief curator of the prestigious meteorite and impactite collections at the Natural History Museum Vienna in Austria. Together with colleagues, he has confirmed four impact craters to date: Keurusselkä in Finland, Luizi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Hummeln in Sweden and Yallalie in Australia.

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Largest impact crater on Earth

Of the roughly 200 impact craters identified so far on our planet, the largest is the Vredefort Crater, near Johannesburg, South Africa, with an estimated diameter of 250–300 kilometres (155–186 miles). This huge, eroded structure was formed around 2 billion years ago, when an asteroid or comet collided with the Earth.