page_title: Hiawatha Glacier
section_title: Cape York meteorite
hierarchical_section_title: Hiawatha Glacier / Cape York meteorite
caption_attribution_description: Agpalilik outside the Geological Museum in Copenhagen
context_page_description: Hiawatha Glacier is a glacier in northwest Greenland, near Inglefield Land. It was mapped in 1922 by Lauge Koch, who noted that the glacier tongue extended into Lake Alida. Hiawatha Glacier attracted attention in 2018 because of the discovery of a crater beneath the surface of the ice sheet in the area. A publication noted in 1952 that Hiawatha Glacier had been retreating since 1920.
context_section_description: Before the crater was discovered, the Inuit had found iron meteorites in the region. In 1957 an American surveyor found a 48-kilogram (106 lb) meteorite, and in 1963 Vagn F. Buchwald found the 20-ton Agpalilik meteorite (a fragment of the Cape York meteorite) on a nunatak near Moltke Glacier, which is on the Agpalilik peninsula in the Thule district of northwest Greenland.
  It has been suggested that the Cape York meteorite is part of the main object responsible for creating the Hiawatha crater. Estimates of the Hiawatha impact's age (which is still being studied), along with other indicators, suggest that the crater may be connected with the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. However, until the impact's age is determined, the connection between the Hiawatha impact and the younger Dryas event remains a suggestion. However, if correct, its associated ejecta would have dispersed as far as Pilauco Bajo in southern Chile. Dating the Hiawatha crater requires drilling almost one km (3,300 ft) through the ice sheet above the crater to obtain a sample of dateable, solidified impact melt from the crater.
caption: The Agpalilik meteorite outside the University of Copenhagen Geological Museum
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