TOKYO, Jan 22 — A crater in western Australia was formed by a meteor strike more than 2.2 billion years ago and is the world’s oldest known impact site, new research published today shows. The study marks the first time that the Yarrabubba crater has been precisely dated, at 2.229 billion years...
Wednesday, 22 Jan 2020 03:00 PM MYT
The study marks the first time that the Yarrabubba crater has been precisely dated, at 2.229 billion years old, and means it is 200 million years older than any similar site known on Earth. But dating ancient craters is not easy: The sites tend to be poorly preserved because erosion and tectonic events such as earthquakes have “progressively erased into the geologic past”, the researchers wrote in their paper, published in the journalAnd even where craters are still present, determining their age is complex.
“Glacial deposits are absent from the rock record for around 400 million years after the Yarrabubba impact,” Chris Kirkland, a professor at Curtin University’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences who was involved in the study, told AFP.The researchers theorise that when the meteor hit Yarrabubba, the site was covered with ice, like much of the rest of the Earth at the time.
The researchers concede there is no proof for now that the site was covered in ice at the time, and large meteor strikes are more often associated with cooling events than atmospheric warming.
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