Massive meteorite crater is not what scientists originally thought

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. One of the largest impact craters found on Earth, researchers theorised the impact could have occurred around 13,000 years ago, a period within humanity’s tenure on planet Earth, and causing 1,000 years of global cooling. Researchers from The Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen, the Swedish Museum of Natural History, and the Natural History Museum of Denmark have now determined the Hiawatha crater was created around 58 million years ago, just eight million years after the dinosaur-killing meteorite that dug out the Chicxulub impact crater in present-day Mexico. “As such, I’m convinced that we’ve determined the crater’s actual age, which is much older than many people once thought.” The new Hiawatha impact date of 58 million years ago means Greenland wasn’t covered by an ice sheet as it is today but was a temperate rainforest with temperatures averaging around 20 degrees Celsius. Although the Earth was in the midst of a long-term warming trend 58 million years ago as the planet recovered from the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub impact, the researchers note the geological record shows high levels of carbon stored in bogs and permafrost between 62 and 59 million years ago, which likely correlates with a period of cooler conditions where carbon dioxide was drawn down from the atmosphere.