City in a Crater

Who would have known?? The charming German city of Nördlingen was built inside a huge meteor crater that struck the region about a million years ago. Evidence of the impact can still be seen to this days in the ring of hills that were created by the meteor. 

Rudi and I spent the day hiking through the crater valley and searching for diamonds!

Yes, strangely enough, the stone buildings in the town contain millions of tiny diamonds, all less than 0.2 mm (0.008 in) across. The meteor impact from a 1 km-wide asteroid that caused the crater created an estimated 72,000 tons of these tiny diamonds when it impacted a local graphite deposit. Stone from this area was later quarried and used to build the city’s buildings. Unfortunately even with the help of Rudi‘s sensitive little nose, we did not find any diamonds. He did find a nice piece of bratwurst that some unlucky tourist had dropped.

There is evidence of settlements in the area dating back to at least 7000 B.C. It was indeed a fascinating day!