While planning a camping trip through Quebec in 2024, amateur astronomer Joël Lapointe noticed a striking circular feature on Google Maps. He alerted experts, who later identified the site in the Côte-Nord region as a previously unknown meteorite impact crater, according to Discover Magazine. The report estimates the crater is about 25 kilometers across and dates the impact to roughly 390 million years ago.
How a map search led to the discovery
Lapointe was looking at Google Maps while planning a trip through Quebec in 2024 when he spotted a conspicuous circular formation. The 2026 Discover Magazine account says he brought it to experts, who investigated the feature and identified it as an impact crater. The precise search phrase he used on the map is not reported.
The discovery began with a visual clue, not a conclusion drawn from the map alone. A circular landform can prompt a geological investigation, but identifying it as an impact structure requires evidence beyond its appearance in satellite imagery.
What researchers reportedly found
Discover Magazine reports that researchers identified the feature as a meteorite impact crater in Quebec’s Côte-Nord region. The article mentions shatter cones among the evidence encountered during field investigation. Shatter cones are geological features associated with the intense shock of an impact; in this account, they are reported evidence, not a substitute for the full geological analysis.
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The primary research paper and an official institutional announcement have not been verified here, so the detailed data, dating method, and complete basis for the identification cannot be independently assessed from the cited report alone.
How large and old is the crater?
Discover Magazine gives an approximate diameter of 25 kilometers and an impact age of roughly 390 million years. These are reported scientific estimates, not exact figures established independently here. The age places the event in the Devonian Period, but the article’s estimate should not be read as a precise date.
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What Google Maps did—and did not—establish
Google Maps helped Lapointe notice the unusual shape. The reported identification came later, after experts examined the site. The distinction matters: satellite imagery can make a potentially significant landform visible, but it cannot by itself prove that the feature formed when a meteorite struck Earth.
The story is therefore not that a map app identified a crater automatically. It is that a person recognized an unusual pattern while using the map for an ordinary purpose, then researchers investigated it with geological evidence.
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