Barringer crater was formed about 50 000 years ago when a nickel-iron meteorite about 50 metres wide, with a mass of 150 million kilograms slammed into the ground in the Arizona desert at about 13 kilometres per second (about 29 000 miles per hour).
The energy released in the explosion is estimated to be equivalent to 2.5 megatonnes of TNT more than 150 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It would have killed anything living within a three or four kilometre radius.
The crater is over a kilometre wide (1200m) and 170m deep, with a 45m-high rim all the way around.