Researchers reported on Friday that a significant impact zone, buried in Australia, was created more than 300 million years ago by the strike of a large asteroid, altering the planet’s landscape.
“The release of dust and greenhouse gases from the crater, combined with the seismic shock and initial fireball, would have led to the incineration of extensive areas of the earth,” stated Andrew Glikson, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.
With a diameter exceeding 10 km (6 miles), the asteroid created an impact zone over 200 km (120 miles) wide, making it the third largest impact zone globally.
“The atmosphere would retain the greenhouse gases for tens of thousands of years,” Glikson mentioned.
The finding was prompted when another researcher pointed out some peculiar mineral deposits located in the East Warburton Basin of South Australia.
Beginning in 2010, Glikson and his team examined quartz grains extracted from deep underground, and the crater was recently identified, he added.
This strike might have been part of an asteroid impact cluster responsible for a mass extinction event, eradicating primitive coral reefs and various other species, according to Glikson, a co-author of a study featured in the journal Tectonophysics.
He noted that this impact occurred prior to the age of dinosaurs.
The announcement regarding this discovery arrived just as a newly found asteroid, roughly half the size of a football field, was scheduled to pass about 27,520 km (17,200 miles) from Earth.
