Lonar Lake Lonar Lake, also known as Lonar crater, is a noti | Upsc Environment

Lonar Lake

Lonar Lake, also known as Lonar crater, is a notified National Geo-heritage Monument,saline, soda lake, located at Lonar in Buldhana district, Maharashtra, India

Lonar Lake was created by a meteorite collision impact during the Pleistocene Epoch.

It is one of the four known, hyper-velocity, impact craters in basaltic rock anywhere on Earth. 

Lonar Crater sits inside the Deccan Plateau – a massive plain of volcanic basalt rock created by eruptions some 65 million years ago.

A 2019 study, conducted by IIT Bombay found that the minerals in the lake soil are very similar to the minerals found in moon rocks brought back during the Apollo Program.

 The lake was declared a protected Ramsar site in November 2020.