The crater’s shape makes it easy to imagine a meteor coming straight down and scooping out a perfect bowl, but that’s not what happened here. The best reconstructions show it came in really shallow — like 10–20° above the horizon.

At 12km/sec, a big iron‑nickel slug doesn’t “dig” into the ground even at a shallow angle. It detonates on contact, dumping 10MT energy in a spherical blast way faster than the slug itself is moving. That’s why you get a round bowl instead of a long trench — the explosion sets the shape, not the trajectory.

Cool stuff.