United States Meteorite Impact Craters

Red Wing Crater - North Dakota's, Red Wing impact crater, located in McKenzie county, is recorded in the Earth Impact Database as an unexposed 9 km structure.  It is buried beneath about 2000 meters of sedimentary rock.

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.

Nature of diagnostic evidence:

• planar deformation features in quartz grains, at least 3 sets, indexed.
• Shatter cones.

Other significant evidence: breccia, characteristic structural morphology.

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: )

Barton, R., Bird, K., Hernandez, J. G., Grajales-Nishimura, J. M., Murillo-Muneton, G., Herber, B., Weimer, P., Koeberl, C.,Neumaier, M., Schenk, O., and Stark, J. (2010) High-Impact Reservoirs. Oilfield Review, volume 21, number 4.

Brenan R. L., Petersen B. L. and Smith H. J. (1975) The Origin of Red Wing Creek Structure, McKenzie County, North Dakota. Wyoming Geological Association, Earth Science Bulletin, volume 8, number 3, pp. 1-41.

Bridges, L. W. D. (1978) Red Wing Creek Field, North Dakota: A Concentricline of Structural Origin (abstract). Montana Geological Society, Twenty-fourth Annual Conference, Williston Basin Symposium, The Economic Geology of Williston Basin. pp. 315-326

Bridges, L. W. D. (1978) Red Wing Creek Field, North Dakota: A Growth Faulted or Meteoritic Impact Structure (abstract). Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists, 1987 Symposium, Williston Basin, Anatomy of a Cratonic Oil Province. p. 433-.



Bridges, L. W. D. (1977) Red Wing Creek Field, North Dakota - Cryptoexplosion 
Structure of Subsurface Origin Rather Than Meteor-Impact Structure (abstract). Abstract from the AAPG-SEPM Rocky Mountain Sections Meeting. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 61, no. 8, p. 1372. 



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



Donofrio, R. R. (1994) Petroleum Exploration Strategies For Impact Features (abstract). Abstract from the 1994 AAPG Annual Convention.

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.

Fischer, D. W. and Bluemle, J. P. (1986) Oil exploration and develoment in the North Dakota Williston Bason: 1984-1985 update. North Dakota Geological Survey, Miscellaneous Series No. 67.

See also other related oil exploration reports and updates concerning Red Wing crater in the Miscellaneous Series of the North Dakota Geological Survey, I have not enumerated these in this bibliography.  The link follows:

Gerhard, L. C. and Anderson, S. B. (1979) Oil exploration and development in the North Dakota Williston Basin. North Dakota Geological Survey, Miscellaneous Series No. 57, 19 pages.



Gerhard, L. C., Anderson, S. B., Lefever, J. A. and Carlson, C. G. (1982) 
Geological development, origin, and energy mineral resources of Williston Basin, 
North Dakota. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 66, pp. 
989-1020, reprinted as North Dakota Geological Survey, Miscellaneous Series 63. 

Grieve, R. A. F. (1982) The record of impact on Earth: Implications for a major Cretaceous/Tertiary impact event. Geological Society of America, Special Paper 190, pp. 25-38.

Grieve, R. A. F. (2005) Economic natural resource deposits at terrestrial impact structures. in McDonald, I., Boyce, A. J., Butler, I. B., Herrington, R. J. and Polya, D. A. (editors), 2005, Mineral Deposits and Earth Evolution. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, no. 248, pp. 1-29.



Grieve, R. A. F., Kreis, K., Therriault, A. M., and Robertson, P. B. (1998) Impact Structures in the Williston Basin (abstract). Abstracts of the 61st Annual Meteoritical Society Meeting, Meteoritics and Planetary Science, volume 33, p. A63.

or



Grieve, R. A. F. and Masaitis, V. L. (1994) The economic potential of terrestrial impact craters. International Geology Review, v. 36, pp. 105-151.

Grieve, R. A. F., Robertson, P. B., & Dence, M. R. (1981) Constraints on the formation of ring impact structures, based on terrestrial data. in Multi-ring basins: Formation and evolution, Proceedings of the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, 1980. (A82-39033 19-91) New York and Oxford, Pergamon Press, pp. 37-57.

Grieve, R. A. F., Therriault, A. M., Kreis, L. K. (1998) Impact structures of the western sedimentary basin of North America: New discoveries and hydrocarbon resources, 8th International Williston Basin Symposium, pp. 189-201.



Herber, B. Weimer, P., Barton, R., Hammon, W. (2009) 3D Interpretation of a Meteorite Impact Field, Red Wing Creek Field, Williston Basin, Western North Dakota (abstract). 2009 AAPG International Conference and Exhibition.

Herber, B., Weimer, P., Bouroullec, R., Barton, R., Hammon, W., Dorn, G., Huang, C., Jiang, S. (2011) 3-D Interpretation of a Meteorite Impact Field, Red Wing Creek Field, Williston Basin, Western North Dakota.

Kent, D. V. (1998) Impacts on Earth in the Late Triassic (letter), Nature, volume 395, p. 126.(Discussion and response regarding Spray et al. 1998.)

Koeberl, C. and Reimold, W. U. (1995) Shock metamorphism at the Red Wing Creek structure, North Dakota: Confirmation of impact origin (abstract). Abstracts of the 26th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, pp. 769-770.

Koeberl, C., Reimold, W. U. and Brandi, D. (1996) Red Wing Creek structure, North Dakota: Petrographical and geochemical studies, and confirmation of impact origin. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, volume 31, issue 3, pp. 335-342. doi: 10.1111/j.1945-5100.1996.tb02070.x

or

Lukk, G. E. (1954) The Williston basin and its exploration problems. Geophysics, volume 19, number 3, pp. 572-581. doi:10.1190/1.19030003.1

McCaslin, J. C. (1976) Red Wing Creek; The meteor-made field. Oil & Gas Journal, volume 74, number 3, p. 79.

no link found

Ormo, J. and Lindstrom, M. (2000) When a cosmic impact strikes the sea bed, Geological Magazine, volume 137, issue 1, p.67-80.

Parson, E. S., Henderson, G. W. and Conti, L. J. (1980) Red Wing Creek Field -- Cosmic Impact Structure (abstract). American Association of Petrolium Geologists Bulletin, volume 64, issue 6, p. 961.

Parson, E. S. (1974) Red Wing Creek Field, North Dakota -- An Extraterrestrial Hydrocarbon Trap (abstract). American Association of Petrolium Geologists Bulletin, volume 58, issue 5, p. 910.

Pickard, C. F. (1994) Twenty years of production from an impact structure, Red Wing Creek field, McKenzie County, North Dakota (abstract). American Association of Petrolium Geologists, 1994 Annual Meeting.

Reimold, W. U., Koeberl, C., Gibson, R. L., and Dressler, B. O. (2005) Economic mineral deposits in impact structures: A Review. In Impact Tectonics, edited by Koeberl, C. and Henkel, H. Berlin-Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 479-522.

Rountree, S. L. K. (1983) Williston basin. Milestone test renews interest in Red Wing Creek field's meteor crater.  

Sawatzky, H. B. (1974) Astroblemes in the Williston Basin. Journal of the Canadian Society of Exploration Geophysicists, volume 10, number 1, pp. 23-38.

Sawatzky, H. B. (1975) Astroblemes in Williston Basin: American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, volume 59, no. 4, p. 694-710.

Sawatzky, H. B. (1976) Why petroleum explorationist should be on lookout for buried fossil craters (abstract). American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 60, no. 8, p. 1409-1410.



Sawatzky, H. B. (1977) Buried impact craters in the Williston basin and adjacent area. in Impact and Explosion Cratering, Roddy, D. J., Pepin, R. O. and Merrill, R. B., eds., Pergamon Press, New York, pp. 461-480.



Schmieder, M., Schwarz, W. H., Buchner, E., Pesonen, L. J., Lehtinen, M., Trieloff, M. (2012) Double and Multiple Impact Events on Earth - Hypotheses, Tests, and Problems (abstract). Abstracts of the 75th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society. Meteoritics and Planetary Science, volume 47, issue supplement s1, p. A341.

or

Spray, J. G., and Kelley, S. P. (2001) Terrestrial Multiple Impact Events (abstract #3087). Abstracts of the International Conference on Catastrophic Events and Mass Extinctions: Impacts and Beyond.



Spray, J. G., Kelley, S. P., and Rowley, D. B. (1998) Evidence for a Late Triassic Multiple Impact Event on Earth (abstract no. 1806). Abstracts of the 29th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Spray, J. G., Kelley, S. P., and Rowley, D. B. (1998) Evidence for a late Triassic multiple impact event on Earth, Nature, volume 392, pp. 171-173. doi:10.1038/32397

or

Westbroek, H-H. and Stewart, R. R. (1996) The formation , morphology, and economic potential of meteorite impact craters. CREWES Research Report, volume 8.