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The Hiawatha crater was exceptionally well preserved despite glacier ice being incredibly effective at erosion. Its state fueled talk that the meteorite might have hit as recently as 13,000 years ago.
However, the crater, which is one of the world’s largest, has now been definitively dated — and it is much, much older. In fact, it slammed into the Earth just a few million years after dinosaurs went extinct, about 58 million years ago.
“Dating the crater has been a particularly tough nut to crack, so it’s very satisfying that two laboratories in Denmark and Sweden, using different dating methods arrived at the same conclusion. As such, I’m convinced that we’ve determined the crater’s actual age, which is much older than many people once thought,” said Michael Storey, head of geology at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, in a news release.
When the asteroid hit, the Arctic was covered in balmy rainforest with temperatures of around 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius)….
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