Joël Lapointe, an amateur astronomer planning a camping trip, spotted a strange circular feature in satellite imagery of Quebec's remote Côte-Nord region in 2024 and flagged it to scientists. An expedition led by planetary geologist Gordon Osinski of Western University traveled to the site near Lake Marsal in October 2025 and found shatter cones -- rock structures that form only under the extreme pressure of a meteorite impact -- confirming the find.
The crater, now named Uhackatik after consultation with the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit, spans 25 kilometers (16 miles) across and formed roughly 390 million years ago. It is the largest impact crater discovered since the 31-kilometer Hiawatha structure in Greenland in 2018, and a Meteoritical Society committee is expected to formally recognize it.
The find highlights how satellite mapping tools, once reserved for scientists, are letting amateur observers spot geological features that eluded formal surveys for hundreds of millions of years.