Serra da Cangalha
Impact crater in Brazil
Serra da Cangalha is an impact crater in Tocantins, Brazil. The crater is between 12 and 13 kilometres (7.5 and 8.1 mi) in diameter, making it the second-largest known crater in Brazil. Its was formed around 220 million years ago, during the Triassic. The name means Pack-Saddle Mountains in Portuguese.
Description
The outer perimeter is a circular inward scarp around 12.5 kilometres (7.8 mi) in diameter on the largely undisturbed Cretaceous and upper Silurian sediments of the Parnaíba basin, breached on the west, north, and south sides by drainage valleys. Within the perimeter there is a series of concentric circular valleys and a central basin, all at roughly the same elevation, separated by ring walls. Shuttle Radar Topography Mission imagery shows a faint ring about 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) in diameter, a second ring of gentle hills around 5.5 kilometres (3.4 mi) in diameter, and an inner ring of steeper hills, about 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) in diameter and up to 420 metres (1,380 ft) high, open to the northwest, surrounding a central basin about 2.2 kilometres (1.4 mi) in diameter.
The impact origin is attested by the presence of impact breccias, quartzite shatter cones, and shocked quartz. The meteorite is believed to have struck the surface at a low oblique angle, 25 to 30 degrees, on dry land. Radial faults are present inside the crater, and some extend up to 16 kilometers from the center.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1287268. Authority coordinates are -8.080, -46.860. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Serra da Cangalha” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.