Aouelloul Glass
Aouelloul Crater, Mauritania
Aouelloul Crater is certainly not one of the Earth’s largest impact scars. At less than one half a kilometer is it small. But, produced there was a fascinating impact melt. Aouelloul glass is dark in color and often bubbly. It sometimes contains nickel-iron particles. These were trapped in the glass at the time of the impact and are part of the asteroid which hit Mauritania 3 million years ago. Often when a crater is very old none of the meteorite survives. But when particles are trapped in glass it is possible to know for sure that the crater is of cosmic origin. There is never very much of this material on the market. It is pretty rare glass.
