Nearing the end of the Triassic period, a bolide (meteor) struck Canada creating what would become an impact crater containing the Manicouagan Reservoir in Quebec, Canada. At the Manicouagan impact crater, research has shown that the impact melt within the crater has an age of 214±1 Mya.
Manicouagan Reservoir lies within the remnant of an ancient eroded impact crater (astrobleme). The crater was formed following the impact of a 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) diameter asteroid which excavated a crater originally about 100 km (62 mi) wide, although erosion and deposition of sediments have since reduced the visible diameter to about 72 km (45 mi). The Manicouagan Reservoir crater is the sixth-largest confirmed impact crater known on earth. Mount Babel is interpreted as the central peak of the crater, formed by post-impact uplift.
Research has shown that impact melt within the crater has an age of 214±1 million years. As this is 12±2 million years before the end of the Triassic, the impact that produced the crater cannot have been the cause of the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event that would occur some 14 million years later.
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