See more: Earth Impact Database

The major features of Lake El'gygytgyn are as follows, according to the following references.
· The lake is 175 m deep with a volume of 14 cubic km and is covered with ice every year from the end of October to the beginning of June.
· The lake surface is 492 m above sea level, and the highest point of the crater rim is 906 m above sea level.
· The crater was formed 3.6 million years ago.
· It is an oligotrophic lake inhabited by rockfish.

Previous surveys indicate that the lake have never been parched nor covered with a glacier since its formation, so layers of sediment more than 350 m thick formed in the bottom of the lake and have recorded the paleoenvironment continuously without disturbance for over 3.6 million years. This is the only such land record in the Arctic Circle. Therefore, in order to promote better understanding on the role of the Arctic Circle in the Earth's climate system, an international research team consisting of researchers from the US, Germany, and Russia gathered bottom core samples of the lake in 1998, 2000 and 2003, and they are planning to excavate in spring of 2006 in the next place. The results for analysis of samples dating back 300,000 years have been published.

Two to three million years ago when global cooling started, an ice sheet developed in the Northern hemisphere, and the Arctic Circle evolved from a warm forest ecosystem to a permafrost ecosystem. Therefore, one of the most valuable research themes is to clarify why and how these phenomena took place. Additionally, it is expected that new knowledge about the formation of the impact crater may be acquired because the landform of the crater has been preserved well.