page_title: Diamantina River ring feature
section_title: Site
hierarchical_section_title: Diamantina River ring feature / Site
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the region west of Winton, Queensland, Australia, in the headwaters of the Diamantina River, that is the subject of geological interest as a possible 300,000,000-year-old impact structure; places marked in green are pastoral stations.
context_page_description: The Diamantina River ring feature is a geological structure possibly caused by an impact event that is believed by scientists from Geoscience Australia to have happened about 300 million years ago in what is now the Channel Country in Central West Queensland, Australia in the region west of the small town of Winton. The consequent cataclysm would have released an enormous amount of energy and had far-reaching consequences. If further research can prove that there was indeed such an impact, it is likely that it would be considered a major event in Earth's geological history.
context_section_description: The zone in which the Winton asteroid impact theoretically happened lies in a sparsely populated area in the Australian Outback centred roughly at 22.15°S 141.9°E. It is roughly circular and its diameter measures some 120 kilometres (75 mi) (and it thus has an area of about 408 square kilometres (158 sq mi)). The depopulated town of Middleton and Dagworth Station – famous for the part it played in the creation of "Waltzing Matilda" – lie within the anomaly discovered here. Skirting the anomaly zone for more than half its circumference, mostly on the north and east sides, round from its headwaters to well below its confluence with the Western River, is the Diamantina River, an intermittent stream with, in most places, several braided channels of the kind that give the Channel Country its name. It was this particular hooked shape in the upper Diamantina that first raised questions.
caption: A map showing the rough extent of the crustal anomaly west of Winton that may be a Palaeozoic impact structure.
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