Red Wing or Red Wing Creek structure is a

meteor A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as mi ...

crater located in

McKenzie County, North Dakota McKenzie County is a county in the U.S. state of North Dakota. As of the 2020 census, the population was 14,704. Its county seat is Watford City. The county lies immediately adjacent to the Williston Micropolitan Statistical Area, although th ...

, about southwest of

Watford City, North Dakota Watford City (Hidatsa: abaʔaruʔush), founded in 1914, is a city in and the county seat of McKenzie County, North Dakota, United States. The population was 6,207 at the 2020 census, making it the thirteenth largest city in North Dakota. Becaus ...

, United States. The crater is not exposed to the surface, but was discovered using seismic techniques, and the structure has produced oil since its discovery in 1972. Red Wing is in diameter, and it is buried at a depth of about The age of the structure is estimated at 200 ± 25 million years (

Triassic The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system (stratigraphy), system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago (Year#Abbreviations yr and ya, Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 ...

History

The Red Wing Creek structure shows up well in seismic studies. The underlying

Ordovician The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period Mya. T ...

rocks are overlain by disturbed Devonian and Mississippian rocks. The structural disturbance is filled by thick rocks of

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...

age, suggesting that the impact took place during the

Shell Oil Company Shell USA, Inc. (formerly Shell Oil Company, Inc.) is the United States-based wholly owned subsidiary of Shell plc, a UK-based transnational corporation " oil major" which is amongst the largest oil companies in the world. Approximately 18,0 ...

drilled exploratory wells on the Red Wing Creek structure in 1965 and 1968. These wells did not find oil, but did indicate very thick sections of Mississippian and Pennsylvanian rocks. In 1972, True Oil Company drilled a well that discovered oil. This discovery had an oil column that was about thick instead of the normal . This thick oil column was because the rocks were tilted on their sides. The discovery of oil led to intense geological and geophysical studies of the Red Wing Creek area. In 1996, Christian Koeberl and his colleagues discovered

planar deformation features Planar deformation features, or PDFs, are optically recognizable microscopic features in grains of silicate minerals (usually quartz or feldspar), consisting of very narrow planes of glassy material arranged in parallel sets that have distinct orie ...

(PDFs) in samples from two oil wells at the center of the structure. This provided unambiguous evidence for shock metamorphism, and confirmed the impact origin of the Red Wing Creek structure.

Hypothetical multiple impact event

It has been suggested by Geophysicist David Rowley of the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

, working with John Spray of the

University of New Brunswick The University of New Brunswick (UNB) is a public university with two primary campuses in Fredericton and Saint John, New Brunswick. It is the oldest English-language university in Canada, and among the oldest public universities in North Ameri ...

and Simon Kelley of the

Open University The Open University (OU) is a British public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off- ...

, that the Red Wing crater may have been part of a hypothetical multiple impact event which also formed the

Manicouagan impact structure Manicouagan Reservoir (also Lake Manicouagan) is an annular lake in central Quebec, Canada, covering an area of . The lake island in its centre is known as René-Levasseur Island, and its highest point is Mount Babel. The structure was created ...

in northern

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

, Rochechouart impact structure in France,

Saint Martin crater Saint Martin is an impact crater in Manitoba, Canada. It is located in the northern part of the Rural Municipality of Grahamdale, northwest of Lake St. Martin. The crater is in diameter and its age was determined to be 227.8 ± 1.1 million year ...

Manitoba , image_map = Manitoba in Canada 2.svg , map_alt = Map showing Manitoba's location in the centre of Southern Canada , Label_map = yes , coordinates = , capital = Winn ...

, and Obolon' crater in

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

.Spray, J.G., Kelley, S.P. and Rowley, D.B. (1998). "Evidence for a late Triassic multiple impact event on Earth". ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'', v. 392, pp. 171-173
Abstract
/ref> All of the craters had previously been known and studied, but their paleoalignment had never before been demonstrated. Rowley has said that the chance that these craters could be aligned like this due to chance are nearly zero.

References

External links

Aerial exploration of the Red Wing crater
{{Impact cratering on Earth Impact craters of the United States Landforms of North Dakota Landforms of McKenzie County, North Dakota Triassic impact craters Jurassic impact craters