Joël Lapointe

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Amateur astronomer spots 390-million-year-old impact crater on satellite maps

Credited with the discovery; reported it to experts in 2024

Joël Lapointe was planning a camping trip to Quebec's remote Côte-Nord region in 2024 when a circular depression near Lake Marsal caught his eye on online satellite maps. He emailed geologists on two continents. A year later, a field expedition reached the site by floatplane and found shatter cones, grooved rock fractures that only form under the shock of an impact. The structure is a 25-kilometer-wide impact crater, blasted into Earth roughly 390 million years ago during the Devonian Period.

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