Qualla: Aouelloul crater https://qualla.com/aouelloul-crater en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:09 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Aouelloul crater https://qualla.com/aouelloul-crater Aouelloul crater: Introduction https://qualla.com/aouelloul-crater/ Roughly three million years ago, long before the first humans walked the Sahara, something fell out of the sky and struck the Akchar Desert with enough violence to melt the ground. The rock did not crack so much as flash to liquid, splashing droplets of fused glass across the sand before settling into a near-perfect circle 390 meters across. That circle is still here. Time has filled it with sediment and softened its edges, but the Aouelloul crater remains one of the clearest reminders that the desert's stillness is only a matter of timescale, and that even this empty quarter of Mauritania has been touched by the violence of the cosmos.

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/e/w/g/aouelloul-crater-wp/eewg-aouelloul-crater-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Aouelloul crater: Anatomy of an Impact https://qualla.com/aouelloul-crater/ The crater is exposed and roughly circular, 390 meters wide, with a rim that rises as much as 53 meters above its floor. Beneath that floor lie about 23 meters of sediment, accumulated over the millions of years since the bowl was carved, gradually burying the deepest scar. What ...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/e/w/g/aouelloul-crater-wp/eewg-aouelloul-crater-anatomy-of-an-impact.mp3 0:06 2 full Aouelloul crater: Glass from the Sky https://qualla.com/aouelloul-crater/ Scattered around the rim are tektites, fragments of natural glass forged in the heat of impact. When the meteorite struck, the energy released was enough to melt the local sandstone and fling molten droplets outward, where they cooled into glassy beads now called Aouelloul glass....

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/e/w/g/aouelloul-crater-wp/eewg-aouelloul-crater-glass-from-the-sky.mp3 0:06 3 full Aouelloul crater: Reading Deep Time https://qualla.com/aouelloul-crater/ Estimates place the crater's age at 3.1 million years, give or take 300,000, putting the impact in the Pliocene epoch. That is recent by geological standards yet unimaginably distant in human terms, predating our species by millions of years. To stand here is to confront two very...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/e/w/g/aouelloul-crater-wp/eewg-aouelloul-crater-reading-deep-time.mp3 0:06 4 full