It Turns Out That the World’s Oldest Impact Crater Isn’t an Impact Crater

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In early 2012, an international research team surveying parts of southwestern Greenland announced that they had discovered the oldest impact crater ever discovered on Earth, estimated at 3.3 billion years old. Now, new research shows that the strange geological feature – known as the Maniitsoq structure – is probably the result of Earthly geological processes, rather than a meteorite impact.


The new study, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters this month, re-examines some of the evidence from the initial 2012 finding. At the center of the ‘crater’ lies an outcrop of pulverized rocks, which the initial team interpreted as the central impact point. But these rocks turned out to be magmatic rock instead, formed from cooling lava. Furthermore, the outcrop was 40 million years younger than originally thought, and nearly identical to a similar deposit found a short distance away, outside the supposed impact zone.

It Turns Out That the World's Oldest Impact Crater Isn't an Impact Crater - Universe Today

In early 2012, an international research team surveying parts of southwestern Greenland announced that they had discovered the oldest impact crater ever discovered on Earth, estimated at 3.3 billion years old. Now, new research shows that the strange geological feature – known as the Maniitsoq...

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