Popigai Impact Structure and its Diamond-Bearing Rocks

This book highlights the most prominent research on the Popigai meteorite crater (Siberia, Russia), the 6th largest known impact structure in the world. Not only does the crater have a diameter of roughly 100 km, it is also an estimated 35.7 million years old. This monograph is an updated, extended and revised edition of the Russian-language book “Diamond-bearing Impactites of Popigai Astrobleme” and presents the most comprehensive research on the Popigai impact structure. The Popigai crater is unique in that the total amount of impact diamonds it contains exceeds all the other diamond-bearing provinces of the world. The work presented here is based on the geological mapping, core logging, geophysical survey and petrological studies of the crater, and was written by the team of geologists who first described the Popigai impact structure and its diamonds, and took part in the exploration of their deposits from 1970 to 1985.