Earth’s oldest asteroid strike linked to ‘big thaw’

Scientists have discovered Earth’s oldest asteroid strike occurred at Yarrabubba, in outback Western Australia, and coincided with the end of a global deep freeze known as a Snowball Earth. The research used isotopic analysis of minerals to calculate the precise age of the Yarrabubba crater for the first time, putting it at 2.229 billion years old — making it 200 million years older than the next oldest impact.