Photo source:  www.southafrica.net

The product of a geological process that was, quite literally, out of this world! The 90 km wide, 2.02 Ga Vredefort Dome is the eroded central uplift of the largest and oldest known impact structure in the world. It presents excellent exposures of deformation and metamorphic phenomena caused by the impact, such as shatter cones, pseudotachylitic breccia, impact melt rock, and UHTLP
metamorphism, as well as a >25 km transect through the Archaean and Palaeoproterozoic rocks of the upper and middle crust of the Kaapvaal craton exposed in the Vredefort Dome.

Field Trip Leader: Roger Gibson, University of the Witwatersrand