The Eye of the Sahara Isn't What Everyone Thinks It Is

In the middle of the Sahara, there's a bullseye forty kilometers wide, a geological formation— so perfectly circular that for most of the twentieth century, geologists were certain it could only be one thing: the scar of a colossal meteorite impact. They spent decades searching for the one piece of proof a real impact always leaves behind. They never found it. The real explanation turned out to be stranger: a mountain built twice, a hundred million years apart, caught mid-erosion. And less than a day's drive away, in the same stretch of Mauritanian desert, a real meteorite — one a French officer actually held in his hands in 1916 — has been missing for over a century. Located in Mauritania. Subscribe for more videos like this:    / @deepearthofficial   CHAPTERS 0:00 The Eye Of The Sahara 0:45 Two Mysteries In One Desert 1:56 Inside The Richat Structure 2:44 Found From Orbit (Gemini, 1965) 3:33 The Obvious Answer: A Meteorite 4:48 The Evidence That Was Never Found 6:47 The Real Answer: Two Volcanic Events, 100 Million Years Apart 8:22 How Wind Carved The Rings 9:52 The Meteorite Still Buried In The Sand (1916) 11:49 Is This Atlantis? (No.) 12:57 A Mountain Still Being Excavated By Wind SOURCES & CREDITS Imagery: NASA/Gemini 4 (1965), NASA/Apollo 9, NASA/ISS (2011, 2020, 2022), MODIS Land Rapid Response Team (NASA GSFC), NASA ASTER Pangaea reconstruction maps: USGS — Kious, Tilling, Kiger, Russell (public domain) Chicxulub gravity anomaly map: Milan Studio (public domain) Meteor Crater, Arizona: Nicholas Hartmann (CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons) Chinguetti meteorite photo: Claire H. (CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons) Terrain: NASA Earth Observatory (Blue Marble: Next Generation); Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics; GEBCO bathymetry Music: original score #RichatStructure #EyeOfTheSahara #Mauritania