Paper: Abbott, D.H., McCafferty, P., et al. (2025). “New Data from a Round, Deep Basin in the Russian Heartland: The Smerdyachee Basin as a Prospective Impact Crater.” Airbursts and Cratering Impacts
Link: https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14293/ACI.2025.0002
The standard model for cosmic impact frequency suggests European Russia should experience one 500-meter crater every 26,300 years. According to these calculations, the region should have seen perhaps one crater — or none at all — during the entire 11,700-year Holocene period.
But the evidence tells a different story. European Russia alone has eight proposed impact craters of 500 meters or less in diameter. Across Western Europe, researchers have identified eight more confirmed Holocene impact events — representing an impact every ~1,500 years rather than every 26,000+ years predicted by traditional models.
Here’s what gives the Tusk that bothersome feeling: How many “lakes” are we walking past without a second thought? How many perfectly round depressions, sitting there innocuously in forests and farmlands, are actually cosmic scars we’ve dismissed as natural features? Lake Smerdyachee in Russia might be another case in point — just like “The Perkins Plume” in Louisiana, which turned out to be a major airburst crater hiding in plain sight.
A new paper in Airbursts and Cratering Impacts adds to this mounting evidence with the most comprehensive analysis yet of Lake Smerdyachee, a mysterious 409-meter-diameter basin east of Moscow. The conclusion? This perfectly circular lake with a raised rim is very likely another recent impact crater — further proof that cosmic bombardment is orders of magnitude more frequent than mainstream science acknowledges.
The Evidence
This comprehensive investigation was led by Tusk Buddy Dallas Abbott of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who spoke at Cosmic Summit this year about her global impact research. Abbott has spent decades documenting recent cosmic catastrophes that directly impacted human populations — including her stunning work on a 66-foot tsunami that struck ancient New York City 2,300 years ago, triggered by an asteroid impact off the New Jersey coast. The international team also includes Patrick McCafferty, the Irish historian whose decades-long work connecting historical records to cosmic catastrophism continues to yield remarkable insights. McCafferty’s research into Celtic and European historical accounts of cosmic events provides crucial context for understanding how these “isolated” impact events fit into broader patterns of cosmic catastrophism.
Lake Smerdyachee sits in a forested region with minimal human development. The research team deployed GPS receivers, sonar equipment, and detailed topographic mapping to document what previous investigators had only glimpsed.
The morphology is textbook impact crater:
- Rim-to-rim diameter: 409±4 meters
- Maximum depth: 29 meters below water surface
- Total relief: 32.5 meters from rim top to lake bottom
- Shape: Bowl-shaped with a continuous raised rim
The lake sits at 85 meters above sea level, while the surrounding rim peaks at 119-121 meters.
Excavation from 130 feet down
The team found angular fragments of Carboniferous basement rock scattered around the southeastern rim. These are sharp-edged chunks of ancient sedimentary rock containing 300+ million-year-old fossils: brachiopods, crinoid stems, and gastropods.
The problem? The Carboniferous basement is buried at least 40 meters below the surface in this region. Something excavated these rocks from deep underground and blasted them onto the rim. Natural karst processes don’t explain the asymmetric distribution around only one-third of the lake’s circumference.
A cosmic impact does.
Nickel Signature
The team found nickel-rich material in rim sediments — including a spherule with ~3% NiO and impact melt with ~1% NiO. Normal terrestrial rocks contain nickel at parts-per-million levels, not percent levels. This extraterrestrial signature was found at the same southeastern location where the basement rocks are concentrated.
The asymmetric distribution suggests the impactor arrived from the northwest at an oblique angle, throwing ejecta preferentially toward the southeast — exactly what impact models predict.
Age and Implications
Previous dating suggests Lake Smerdyachee formed sometime after the Last Glacial Maximum but within the Holocene. Fission track analysis gives ages of 1,300±800 years and 18,000±7,000 years. Thermoluminescence dating suggests >10,000 years.
This adds to mounting evidence that cosmic impacts are far more frequent than traditional models predict. The European record shows 8 proposed Holocene craters in just 3 countries — an impact event every ~1,500 years rather than the predicted ~26,000 years.
Smerdyachee represents that challenging middle ground: too small to produce massive shocked quartz signatures, too large to scatter meteorite fragments everywhere. But the combination of morphology, basement excavation, and nickel-rich materials makes a compelling case.
Whether this connects to broader patterns of cosmic catastrophism or represents an isolated event remains to be determined. Either way, the Russian heartland just became considerably more cosmically interesting.
Paper: “New Data from a Round, Deep Basin in the Russian Heartland: The Smerdyachee Basin as a Prospective Impact Crater” Journal: Airbursts and Cratering Impacts, 2025
DOI: 10.14293/ACI.2025.0002