United States Meteorite Impact Craters

Newporte Crater - North Dakota's Newporte Crater is reported in the Earth Impact Database as a buried 3.2 km structure that is less than 500 million years old. 

Koeberl and Reimold (1995) observe that the location was first discovered during resource exploration in the 70s, and that it is buried in Precambrian igneous and metamorphic basement rock beneath 3 kilometers of overlying material.

Oil shales located within the highly fractured Cambrian to Ordovician sandstone basement (Westbroek and Stewart, 1996).

Evidence of Impact Origin

The impact origin of each location listed on this website has been supported by unambiguous diagnostic evidence of hypervelocity impact that has been reported in a scientific (usually peer reviewed) context.  Without such evidence, a geological structure is not a confirmed impact crater.  This section, which is included for each crater on this website, is not an exhaustive list of such published evidence, but is meant to demonstrate that appropriate work has been done for each listing.

Koeberl, C., Reimold, W.U. and Brandt,D., The Newporte impact structure, North Dakota: Shock metamorphism in breccias (abstract). Lunar and Planetary Science XXVI, pp. 773-774. 1995.

Nature of diagnostic evidence:

• planar deformation features in quartz grains

Other significant evidence: planar deformation features in feldspar, breccia, kinked biotite, morphology from seismic and drill core studies.

Bibliography and References:

(If links to articles don't work, don't give up. Try pasting the link shown into a search engine or searching for the article authors, title, or other reference information.  If your research leads you to additional scientific references related to this crater, please help improve this resource by sending a note with the new citation(s) to: )

Castaño, J. R., Clement, J. H., Kuykendall, M. D., and Sharpton, V. L. (1997) Source-rock potential of impact craters, in Ames Structure in Northwest Oklahoma and Similar Features: Origin and Petroleum Production (1995 Symposium), Johnson, K. S.and Campbell, J. A., eds. Oklahoma Geological Survey Circular 100, pp. 100-103.

Clement, J. H. and Mayhew, T. E. (1979) Newporte discovery opens new pay. Oil and Gas Journal, volume 77, no. 26, pp. 165-172.

no link found

Donofrio, R. R. (1997) Survey of hydrocarbon-producing impact structures in North America: Exploration results to date and potential for discovery in Precambrian basement rock. in Ames Structure in Northwest Oklahoma and Similar Features: Origin and Petroleum Production (1995 Symposium), Johnson, K. S.and Campbell, J. A., eds. Oklahoma Geological Survey Circular 100, pp. 17-29.

Donofrio, R. R. (1981) Impact craters: implications for basement hydrocarbon production. Journal of Petroleum Geology, volume 3, issue 3, pp. 279–302. doi: 10.1111/j.1747-5457.1981.tb00931.x

or

Forsman, N. F. and Gerlach, T. R. (1995) The Newporte structure: the first petroliferous basement impact crater (abstract), Proceedings of the North Dakota Academy of Science, volume 49, p. 56.

no link found

Forsman, N. F., Gerlach, T. R. and Anderson, N. L. (1996) Impact origin of the Newporte structure, Williston Basin, North Dakota. AAPG Bulletin, v. 80, no. 5, pp. 721-730.

Gerlach, T. R. (1994) Evaluation of a possible subsurface impact crater: the Newporte structure, northwestern Renville County, North Dakota, Master's Thesis, University of North Dakota.

no link found

Gerlach, T. R., Anderson, N. L., and Forsman, N. F. (1995) The Newporte structure: a petroliferous subsurface impact crater, Renville County, North Dakota (abstract). Seventh International Williston Basin Symposium. p. 187-193.

Gerlach, T. R., Forsman, N. F., and Anderson N. L. (1994) Evidence for an impact origin of the Newporte structure, Renville County, North Dakota (abstract). Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, volume 26, no. 7, p. 425. 

no link found

Koeberl C. and Reimold W. U. (1994) Additional evidence for impact origin of the Newporte, North Dakota, structure. Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, volume 26, no. 7.

no link found

Koeberl C. and Reimold W. U. (1995) The Newporte impact structure, North Dakota. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 59. pp. 4747-4767.



or

Koeberl, C., Reimold, W. U. and Brandt, D. (1995) The Newporte impact structure, North Dakota: Shock metamorphism in breccias (abstract). Abstracts of the 26th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.



Westbroek, H.-H. and Stewart, R. R., 1996, The formation , morphology, and economic potential of meteorite impact craters: 1996 CREWES Research Report, 8, pp. 34.1-34.36.