Massive meteor crater the size of Paris was discovered lurking under the ice in Greenland

A massive meteor crater the size of Paris was discovered lurking under the ice in Greenland. It was uncovered by a team of international scientists using radar data.


Huge crater discovered in Greenland – here's how the impact may have wiped out the mammoths




If it is really true that the Greenland crater was created 12,000 years ago or more, it could explain a mysterious feature called the Younger Dryas event. This was a sudden and dramatic change in climate – a glacial period about 12,900 to 11,700 years ago, followed by gradual climatic warming. Previously, scientists believed that this event was caused by a meteor exploding before impact, which would also have caused changes to the local environment.



Despite this lack of evidence, we know that meteorite impacts can produce dramatic changes to the local environment. Larger ones can even have a drastic effect on the global environment – bringing about mass extinctions. The huge Chicxulub crater in Mexico, for example, is believed to have contributed to killing the dinosaurs.

An ice-sheet in Greenland’s Inglefield Land is hiding the Hiawatha crater. Credit: Natural History Museum of Denmark, Cryospheric Sciences Lab, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA




Phys.org article with pictures and information posted above


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NASA Article on Greenland's Hiawatha Crater