The Patomskiy crater (Kolpakov cone)

OVERVIEW

The Patomskiy crater, or Kolpakov cone, is a large mound of shattered limestone blocks on the slopes of the Patom Highlands in the Bodaybinsky District of Irkutsk Oblast, 360 km from Bodaybo. Its base is about 160 m across and it rises about 40 m; its crown is ring-shaped with a smaller mound about 12 m high in the centre. The geologist Vadim Kolpakov described it in 1949, though local people knew it before; tree-ring dating puts its age at about 300 years.

HISTORY

Hypotheses have included the footprint of an ultra-dense meteorite, a fragment of the Tunguska body, and the blow-out of a deep pocket of natural gas. At the 'Patom Crater 2010' conference of the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, Viktor Antipin of the Institute of Geochemistry reported that since the Institute's 2006 expedition it had concluded the crater probably originated from geological processes, with no serious evidence ever given for a meteorite; geophysicists of the Saint Petersburg Mining University and Yekaterinburg's Institute of Geophysics reached the same conclusion, of an origin from within the earth.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Its origin was long a mystery, and some press asked whether it was 'a volcano or a UFO'. The current scientific view is an endogenous, volcanic-type origin about 300–350 years ago.

VISITING

The crater lies in dense taiga, 360 km from the district centre of Bodaybo.