Pleistocene meteor crater on Greenland

[jim mcnamara]

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-huge-crater-greenland-impact-northern.html
Paywall: advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/11/eaar8173

A 31 km wide crater in Northern Greenland has been hidden under a massive glacier, until now. Using new radar systems and older technologies, the authors document the existence of a newly found massive crater. Getting a date on the impact event is currently fuzzy. They estimate it occurred in the Pleistocene which is a lot of time. (circa 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago, more than a 2 million year span) . They estimate the iron meteor was 1 km wide.

If you have an interest in punctual paleoclimate changes, then this research project - down the road - may be an interesting read as the subsequent planned research continues. There is a potential debris field, not proven yet, that is the next object of interest for the researchers.

 

[Genava]

This review by Paul Voosen is better and is free:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...ce-points-climate-altering-impact-time-humans

 

[BillTre]

This review by Paul Voosen is better and is free:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...ce-points-climate-altering-impact-time-humans

I was about to post on this.
The article explains much more about how the discovery came about as well as speculation about how the impact could have lead to the Younger Dryas period of cooling (fresh water from the impact melted ice disrupting the water flow in the N. Atlantic) which further speculation deals with how it might have affected North American mega fauna and the Clovis culture.
They did not want to put that in the original article because it was speculative and would raise lots of questions tangental to their crater discovery.

 

[Nik_2213]

Curious coincidence alert:
IIRC, if you look at the Iceland hot-spot back-track, it passes under that region at approx 80~100 MY.
Could this feature be much, much older than Pleistocene ??
I know there's a long and unfortunate history of impact craters being mistaken for odd volcanic features, could this be a rare example of the converse ?

FWIW, I'd be delighted if this feature is an impact crater of Pleistocene era, wholly or partly responsible for the very wide tektite 'strewn field'...

 

[davenn]

I know there's a long and unfortunate history of impact craters being mistaken for odd volcanic features, could this be a rare example of the converse ?

No, definitely not !
volcanic eruptions don't form shocked quartz

FWIW, I'd be delighted if this feature is an impact crater of Pleistocene era, wholly or partly responsible for the very wide tektite 'strewn field'...

which tektite strewn field are you referring to ?

I know of no known strewn field that isn't already related to a known impact

cheers
Dave

 

[Nik_2213]

Ah, the N. American tektites have been tied to the Chesapeake Bay feature ~34 MY.
My Bad.

 

[davenn]

Ah, the N. American tektites have been tied to the Chesapeake Bay feature ~34 MY.

yup

 

[Cosmic Tucj]

 

[Cosmic Tucj]

There is a strewn field possibly related to the Hiawatha Crater Discovery. Its is the Younger Dryas . Boundary field and was documented in a paper I co-authored here, if you have any questions.: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/28/E1903