Vargeão Dome is a meteorite crater in Santa Catarina State, Brazil, straddling the municipalities of Vargeão, Faxinal dos Guedes, and Passos Maia.

The crater is an almost perfectly circular depression with steep walls, in diameter and up to deep, relative to its rim. It is of Early Cretaceous age, or about 123 ± 2 Ma.

identified an anomalous circular structure in radar images produced by the RADAMBRASIL survey, and called it the Vargeão Dome. In the early 1980s, E. Barbour Jr. and W.A.G. Correa

studied the structure in detail, in the context of oil/gas surveys of the area, and proposed a volcanic/tectonic origin for the structure. In 1982, Á. P. Crósta and A. Paiva Filho identified it as an impact crater. Shocked quartz was identified by M. V. Coutinho in 1987, and the occurrence of maskelynite glass was reported by J. Hachiro and others in 1993

Conservation status

The area around and inside the crater has been heavily farmed since the end of the 19th century; Vargeão's city hall is located inside the crater, near the southern rim. Nevertheless, the crater is still well-preserved. The local population is well aware of the impact origin of the structure, to the point that the town's official nickname is Meteor City.

See also

  • Vista Alegre crater

References

<!--

Kazzuo-Vieira, C. 2003. Mapeamento geológico do astroblema de Vargeão, SC. Monografia de conclusão do curso de Geologia, Instituto deGeociências da Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), 48 p.

Kazzuo-Vieira, C.; Crósta, A.P.; Choudhuri, A. 2004. Impact features from Vargeão Dome, Southern Brazil. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 39-Supplement:A-52 (abstract).

Paiva Filho, A. 2000. Estratigrafia e tectônica do nível de riodacitos pórfiros da Formação Serra Geral. Tese de doutoramento, Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), 185 p.

-->

  • Earth Impact Database