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60-million-year-old meteorite strike found


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Geologists exploring volcanic rocks on Scotland's Isle of Skye found something out-of-this-world instead: ejecta from a previously unknown, 60 million-year-old meteorite impact. The discovery, the first meteorite impact described within the British Paleogene Igneous Province (BPIP), opens questions about the impact and its possible connection to Paleogene volcanic activity across the North Atlantic.

Lead author Simon Drake, an associate lecturer in geology at Birkbeck University of London, zeroed in on a meter-thick layer at the base of a 60.0 million-year-old lava flow. "We thought it was an ignimbrite (a volcanic flow deposit)," says Drake. But when he and colleagues analyzed the rock using an electron microprobe, they discovered that it contained rare minerals straight from outer space: vanadium-rich and niobium-rich osbornite.

https://phys.org/news/2017-12-geologists-scotland-million-year-old-meteorite.html

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These mineral forms have never been reported on Earth. They have, however, been collected by NASA's Stardust Comet Sample Return Mission as space dust in the wake of the Wild 2 comet.

Very interesting.

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I bet that made an impact...

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It was not cool to be a dinosaur back then :(

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