Joël Lapointe was planning a camping trail through Quebec's Côte-Nord region when he stumbled upon a large indentation in the terrain, CBC reported at the time. The pit, centered around Lake Marsal, was about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) in diameter and a near-perfect ring — it didn't seem like a normal ditch. Lapointe eventually got in touch with French geophysicist Pierre Rochette, who said that the surrounding topography was "very suggestive" of an impact crater.
"One of the key things we look for is evidence for shock metamorphism, which can only occur due to the immense pressures created by asteroid or cometary impacts — or nuclear explosions," Gordon Osinski, a professor of planetary geology at Western University, told Live Science in an email. "Most of these features are microscopic, so you can only confirm in the lab with samples."
In October 2025, Osinski and a team of geologists visited the site to investigate whether any of these features were present. "This was one of the most arduous expeditions I’ve ever done — and I’ve done 25 expeditions to the Arctic and 6 continents," he said. "The terrain was incredibly rough and rugged, plus [there were] lots of bugs."
Taking samples from the rocks, the team dated the crater at 390 million years old.
A) Shatter cone at the center of the structure. B) melt rock 4 km (2.5 miles) west of the structure center (Image credit: Gattacceca, J. et al.)So far, we know of roughly 200 impact craters on Earth, 31 of which have been found in Canada. "Typically about 1 or 2 craters are discovered per year, but these are typically less than 5-10 km [3 to 6 miles] in size," Osinski said. "[A crater of this size] is pretty rare."
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Speaking to Radio-Canada, Lapointe said that he was very happy to hear his discovery had been confirmed as a genuine meteor crater. "It's not every day that an ordinary citizen finds a 390-million-year-old crater," he said. “I encourage everyone to not ignore intuition or an observation, even if it isn’t part of your field of expertise.”
Osinski and the team will continue their work on the collected samples to learn more about the impact site. "Any crater discovered offers us insight into how craters form and the effects that they can have on Earth’s geology, biology, and climate," he told Live Science.
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