Tswaing crater
impact crater in South Africa
Tswaing (Tswana for "place of salt") is an impact crater enclosed by a 1,946 ha nature reserve, situated in northern Gauteng province, South Africa. The crater and reserve are situated on a base of ancient granite of the Bushveld Igneous Complex, some 40 km to the north-northwest of Pretoria (just north of Soshanguve). This astrobleme is 1.13 km in diameter and 100 m deep and its age is estimated to be 220,000 ± 52,000 years (Pleistocene). The impactor is believed to have been a chondrite or stony meteorite some 30 to 50 m in diameter that was vaporised during the impact event. Morokweng impact structure, another South African crater of chondrite origin, lies north-west of Vryburg. Since 1996 it falls under the auspices of Ditsong Museums of South Africa.
Etymology
The name Tswaing means "place of salt" in Tswana and the crater was also formerly known in English as the Pretoria Saltpan crater and in Afrikaans as Soutpankrater, due to the highly saline lake on the crater floor.
Palaeoclimatology
Lipid biomarkers and carbon and hydrogen isotopic ratios from the lake indicate the existence of regional humid climatic periods between 84,000 and 80,000 years BP and between 50,000 and 39,000 BP. In contrast, intervals of high aridity occurred around 76,000 BP, from 73,000 to 69,000 BP, from 55,000 to 51,000 BP, and from 31,400 to 12,600 BP. Since 84,000 BP, the vegetation of the region around the lake has been dominated by savanna-type plants.
History
Stone tools from the Middle Stone Age show that the crater was regularly visited by people from as far back as 100,000 years ago in order to hunt and collect salt. Water in the crater comes from surface springs, ground water and rain water and is rich in dissolved carbonates and sodium chlorides.
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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 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1513620. Authority coordinates are -25.409, 28.083. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tswaing crater” 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.