Silverpit crater

Silverpit crater is a buried sub-sea structure under the North Sea off the coast of the island of Great Britain. The 20 km (12 mi) crater-like form, named after the Silver Pit—a nearby sea-floor valley recognized by generations of fishermen—was discovered during the routine analysis of seismic data collected during exploration for gas in the Southern North Sea Sedimentary Basin.

Its origin as a meteor impact structure was first proposed and widely reported in 2002. It would be the first impact crater identified in or near Great Britain. Its age was proposed to lie somewhere in a 29-million-year interval between 74 and 45 million years (Late Cretaceous–Eocene).

Other authors have disputed its extraterrestrial origin. An alternative origin was proposed in which the feature was created by withdrawal of rock support by salt mobility, which was overwhelmingly judged to be more plausible in a 2009 debate held by the Geological Society of London. A 2025 paper presented new evidence in favour of an impact origin, suggesting that it was created during the Eocene 46–43 million years ago, with a diameter of approximately 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi), surrounded by a disturbed zone 18 kilometres (11 mi) in diameter.