Comet or Asteroid Shower in the Late Eocene?
- 23 July 2004
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 305 (5683), 492
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1098481
Abstract
The passage of a comet shower ~35 million years ago is generally advocated to explain the coincidence during Earth's late Eocene of an unusually high flux of interplanetary dust particles and the formation of the two largest craters in the Cenozoic, Popigai and the Chesapeake Bay. However, new platinum-group element analyses indicate that Popigai was formed by the impact of an L-chondrite meteorite. Such an asteroidal projectile is difficult to reconcile with a cometary origin. Perhaps instead the higher delivery rate of extraterrestrial matter, dust, and large objects was caused by a major collision in the asteroid belt.Keywords
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