New dating rewrites history of Oklahoma meteor crater

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have discovered that a meteor hit Ames, Oklahoma, at a different time than previously believed.Under the small town of Ames, a crater lies buried beneath layers of rock. The crater is also important today because the area is a major oil and gas-producing region. Researchers have now challenged the fossil evidence that defined its age. Scientists had previously believed the impact was about 467.5 million years old. It was therefore considered part of a group of meteor impacts across North America known as the Ordovician Meteor Event. Because there were so many impacts around the same time, scientists theorised that Earth may once have had a ring of space rocks around it, similar to Saturn’s rings during the Middle Ordovician. They believed this ring of asteroid debris may have eventually fallen towards Earth, causing many meteor impacts.The researchers at the University of Texas, however, recently discovered that the Ames impact structure is nearly 100 million years younger than previously believed. By dating zircon crystals in the rocks, scientists discovered that the meteor hit Ames about 370 million years ago, not 467 million years...