Tswaing Nature Reserve - Attractions Nearby Pembi Pretoria Conference Centre

Tswaing Nature Reserve - Pembi Pretoria Conference Venue Nearby Attractions

Pretoria Information > Tswaing Nature Reserve

Tswaing Nature Reserve
If an object the size of half a soccer field hit the earth at 4 000 kilometres per hour hundreds of thousands of years ago, what would you expect to find? The rather special Tswaing Meteorite Crater, some 40 kilometres north of Pretoria.

What's special about it is that firstly, it is one of the best preserved meteorite craters in the world, and secondly, it's very accessible - you can walk down into the crater, unlike a similar crater in Arizona in the United States, which gets so many visitors - 250 000 a year - that access to the bottom of the crater is no longer allowed.

The Tswaing Crater (Tswaing meaning "Place of Salt" in the Tswana language) gets 12 000 visitors a year, mostly Gautengers, coming to marvel at this wonder that hit the earth 220 000 years ago with an impact of about 100 atomic bombs of the type dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It created a crater of just over one kilometre in diameter and sent up 60 metres of earth to form the present-day crater rim.

The crater is one of around 170 impact craters in the world and one of four known impact craters in South Africa. It has one of only four meteorite crater museums in the world.

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