This has got to be one of the strangest places on Earth – but you
couldn’t make much of it if you were just walking by. It’s located in a
rather remote area, and the few people who noticed something odd about
it didn’t know just how odd it really is because it’s hard to figure out
from ground level; as a result this 50 km structure didn’t receive much
attention until some astronauts made reports about it .
Located in Mauritania, the Eye of the Sahara is not really what you
would call a structure, but rather a huge circular formation; it was
originally thought to be a crater, but the more recent and accepted
theories suggest that it is in fact a product of erosion that took place
in geological time.
You can also see it on Google Maps, it’s really a brilliant view, and
you can zoom in and out for proportions (coordinates are 21.124217,
-11.395569).
The Richat structure (Sahara, Mauritania) appears as a large dome at
least 40 km in diameter within a Late Proterozoic to Ordovician
sequence. Erosion has created circular cuestas represented by three
nested rings dipping outward from the structure. The center of the
structure consists of a limestone-dolomite shelf that encloses a
kilometer-scale siliceous breccia and is intruded by basaltic ring
dikes, kimberlitic intrusions, and alkaline volcanic rocks
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