Summary
June 29, 2012: An article in New Scientist tells of a discovery by Danish geologists of a impact site in Greenland which they believe to be the largest impact crater known on earth.
The site is located to the east of the town of Maniitsoq on Greenland's western coastline. Although the site they've found is only 100 km wide, that's because only the very bottom of the crater remains; the impact happened so long ago that the rest of the crater has eroded away. The rock at the very center of the impact site is crushed and fused in a way the geologists say could only have been caused by something very big striking the earth.
The geologists estimate that the meteorite which caused the impact was about 30 km across and created a crater 600 km wide and 25 km deep. They believe it took place nearly 3 billion years ago, roughly 2.4 billion years before the Cambrian "explosion" of life on earth.
Source
Game and Story Use
- Your party is part of a geological expedition investigating an extremely old impact crater. What might they find at its center?
- Maybe… Cthulhu?
- Yes, I always say that.
- Maybe… Cthulhu?