L’Hiawatha crater is a huge impact crater that lies beneath the Greenland ice sheet and, according to studies, was produced by an asteroid or a comet that crashed to Earth 58 million years agoat least this is what has been discovered with a new and recent study that was later published in the journal Science Advances.
It had previously been suggested that the space rock responsible for the Hiawatha crater may have struck as humans roamed the Earth, but these new findings indicate that the event actually occurred just a few million years after the age of the dinosaurs.
What we know about Hiawatha crater
Called the Hiawatha crater, with an impact zone covering an area of over 31 kilometers (19.3 miles), it lies under a kilometer of ice in northwest Greenland, and was first detected in 2015 during an ice sheet thickness study.
Coal particles collected from glacial meltwater were initially estimated to have come from plant species that existed during the Pleistocene, which ended about 11,700 years ago, and based on these findings, researchers speculated that the Hiawatha crater may have formed about 13,000 years ago, potentially triggering a period of global cooling called Younger Dryas.
This scenario fits perfectly with the so-called hypothesis ofYounger Dryas impactwhich postulates that fragments of a colossal disintegrating space rock have struck the Earth in approximately multiple locations 12,800 years agocausing a return to glacial conditions that lasted for about a millennium.
To determine the true age of the crater, the authors of this latest study looked at sediments in the meltwater that showed clear signs of being hit by an asteroid impact, and this included grains of partially melted rock and small sand. stones containing “shocked” zircon crystals.
They then dated the sand by heating the grains with a laser until they released argon, thus analyzing the different argon isotopes present in their sample, determined that the rocks from which the sand was created were affected 58 million years fto.
Thus by measuring the rate of decay of uranium inside the “shocked” zircon crystals, it was confirmed that these too were produced 58 million years ago, thus providing rather conclusive evidence for the age of the Hiawatha crater.
“The dating of the crater was a particularly difficult thing to decipher”
study author Michael Storey explained in a statement, who later added:
“I am convinced that we have determined the actual age of the crater, which is much older than many people once thought.”
These results indicate that the asteroid Hiawatha did not hit our planet during the age of humans nor did it contribute to the Younger Dryas, and the timing of the impact is not synchronized with a major warming event that occurred about 56 million years ago. raising questions about the influence the collision may have had on the global climate.
The researchers, therefore, are calling for further studies into the nature of the material produced by the event, which according to them could “allow the direct integration of the impact event with sedimentary climate proxies”.
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