ScienceScienceDailyA meteor hit Oklahoma 100 million years later than scientists thought
New zircon crystal dating shows the buried Oklahoma meteor crater is nearly 100 million years younger than scientists previously believed.
A meteor crater buried beneath Oklahoma has turned out to be nearly 100 million years younger than scientists thought. Zircon crystals show the Ames impact occurred about 370 million years ago, meaning it was not part of the mysterious Ordovician bombardment once linked to a possible ring of debris around Earth. Instead, the impact coincided closely with a major mass extinction that devastated marine life.
University of Texas researchers have redated the Ames meteor impact crater in Oklahoma to about 370 million years ago, not 467.5 million as long assumed.
The team used zircon crystal dating rather than fossil evidence, finding the earlier date was misleading because the impact had churned up much older fossils into the rock.
The new age places the Ames impact close to the Frasnian-Famennian mass extinction event, potentially opening new questions about that period of Earth history.
The study found zircon U-Pb dating is one of the most accurate ways to date impact craters, showing fossil-based dating alone can be misleading when impacts churn up older material.
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