The meteor that exploded over Russia's Ural Mountains Friday was the biggest recorded object to strike the Earth in more than a century, scientists said Saturday.

The energy of the detonation appears to be equivalent to about 300 kilotons of TNT, said Margaret Campbell-Brown of the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Western Ontario.

That would make it far more powerful than the nuclear weapon tested by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea just days ago and the largest rock crashing onto the planet since a meteor broke up over Siberia's Tunguska river in 1908.

Campbell-Brown¡¯s calculations show that the meteoroid was approximately 15 meters across when it entered the atmosphere, and its mass at around 7,000 metric tonnes. "That would make it the biggest object recorded to hit the Earth since Tunguska," she says.

The meteor appeared at around 09.25 local time over the region of Chelyabinsk, near the southern Ural Mountains. The fireball blinded drivers and a subsequent explosion blew out windows and damaged hundreds of buildings.

So far, around 1,200 people are reported to have been injured, including over 200 children, mainly from broken glass, according to a statement from the Russian Emergency Ministry.(Source: agencies)