Geology & Discovery.
The Sudbury Basin is the second-largest confirmed meteorite impact structure on Earth — a ~1.85-billion-year-old crater whose original diameter is estimated at 200–260 km, eroded today to a ~60 × 30 km elliptical basin whose rim runs through the City of Greater Sudbury. The Sudbury Igneous Complex around the rim hosts one of the world's most productive nickel-copper-platinum-group ore bodies, mined commercially since 1883.
The brief.
Dynamic Earth's Going Underground tour at the Big Nickel site is the canonical interpretive descent — roughly seven storeys into a former Inco demonstration drift. The above-ground geology — Sudbury Igneous Complex norite and granophyre, footwall breccias, Onaping Formation impact debris, and shatter-cone outcrops — is interpreted at Dynamic Earth and on outdoor signage at A.Y.
Jackson Lookout / Onaping Falls and along basin-rim drives. The regreening program (1978–present) restored ~3,400 ha of smelter-barren landscape; the program received a UN Local Government Honours Award in 1992 and is widely cited in restoration ecology.
Mine-experience tours are operated by Dynamic Earth and require timed entry. Sudbury Basin geology runs year-round; the surface lookout points read best May through October.
5. places.
- 01
Sudbury Basin / Sudbury Igneous Complex
The rim runs through Greater Sudbury; outcrops and lookouts around the basin.
- 02
Dynamic Earth — Going Underground
Mine-tour descent into a former Inco demonstration drift at the Big Nickel site.
- 03
Big Nickel surface plaza
Outdoor geology and mining interpretation at the Dynamic Earth site.
- 04
A.Y. Jackson Lookout / Onaping Falls
Surface exposure of Sudbury Basin geology along the Onaping River, ~50 km northwest of downtown.
- 05
Regreening corridors
Liming-and-seeding restoration sites visible across the basin, particularly along Hwy 17 west and the Hwy 144 corridor.
Today's read.
Cold but firm — winter-ready conditions · light winds · clean air.