Rare Chapter of Earth’s Recent Past Revealed!

Scientists have identified a massive 900-metre-wide impact crater in Guangdong Province, China — the largest known crater formed in the past 11,000 years.

“On Earth, the formation of planar deformation features in quartz is only from the intense shockwaves generated by celestial body impacts,” said Ming Chen of the Centre for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research in Shanghai.

The Jinlin crater’s exceptional size and preservation defy expectations, surviving millennia of monsoons and erosion thanks to its protective granite layers. Its discovery not only rewrites what scientists know about recent meteor impacts but also suggests that many more ancient craters could still lie hidden beneath Earth’s surface.