Hiawatha Crator: A possible glimpse into the earth’s climate history

 A 31Km wide impact crater in Greenland, known as the Hiawatha impact crater buried under ice was dated by researchers and has been stated that the meteorite impacted a few million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs and sheds new light on Earth's evolution in the post-dinosaur era.

 


Since 2015, when geologists from the University of Copenhagen's GLOBE Institute found the Hiawatha impact crater in north-eastern Greenland, there has been much controversy over the crater's age. The Natural History Museum of Denmark and the GLOBE Institute at the University of Copenhagen, as well as the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, have conducted new analyses on grains of sand and pebbles from the Hiawatha impact crater, demonstrating that it is much older. In fact, according to a new study published today in the journal Science Advances, the crater is said to be 58 million years old. Dr Gavin Kenny of the Swedish Museum of Natural History said that "In the future, the new study will help us explore the impact's likely effect on climate during an important time of Earth's history. The asteroid collided with Earth, leaving a 31-kilometer-wide, one-kilometer-deep crater in its wake. The crater is large enough to hold Washington, D.C. completely. The crater is now submerged beneath the Hiawatha Glacier in Northwest Greenland. Rivers flowing from the glacier provided sand and pebbles that had been superheated by the 58 million-year-old collision. The sand was tested by burning the grains with a laser until they emitted argon gas, whilst the rock samples were analyzed by uranium-lead dating of the mineral zircon at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. There is currently no conclusive evidence that the Hiawatha impact affected world climate. The crater's dating, on the other hand, permits the international research team working on it to begin testing alternative ideas in order to better understand the crater's impact on the local and global climate.

By Aaron Pereira

Tybsc geology

REFERENCE

Geology Page. (2022, March 13). Giant impact crater in Greenland occurred a few million years after dinosaurs went extinct. Geology Page. Retrieved April 8, 2022, from https://www.geologypage.com/2022/03/giant-impact-crater-in-greenland-occurred-a-few-million-years-after-dinosaurs-went-extinct.html

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