Steinheim Meteor Crater Museum

A small museum in a 3.8-kilometre crater with a central hill, the Ries crater's smaller neighbour.

Key facts

Where

Steinheim am Albuch, Germany

Kind

Visitor site

Visiting

Open-air site or visitor centre

About 15 million years ago, probably at the same time as the impact that made the Ries crater about 40 kilometres away, a smaller body struck what is now the Swabian Jura and made a crater about 3.8 kilometres across. The Steinheim basin is a classic example of a complex crater: the rock in the middle rebounded after the impact to form a central hill, now crowned by farmland.

The Meteor Crater Museum in the village explains how the crater formed and shows shatter cones, cone-shaped fractures that form only under the intense shock of an impact, together with fossils of the animals and plants that lived in the lake that later filled the basin.

Highlights

• Shatter cones proof of the impact

Related pages

Opening times, what is on display and access to research collections change over time, so check with the institution before you visit.