Learn how Scientists Used Zircon Crystals to Date a Meteorite Impact!
The Bay of Stoer, home to a billion year old meteorite impact
Post Author- Ellis Nolan
In a new study, researchers have observed that a meteorite impact in modern-day Scotland, thought to have occurred 1.2 billion years ago, was actually much more recent, at around 990 million years ago. Their method: studying the microscopic zircon crystals that they say “captured the impact.”
The site of this discovery is known as the Stac Fada Member, a layer of the Bay of Stoer geological formation in Northern Scotland. The member is of particular interest to scientists as it is thought to be illustrative of how meteorite impacts influenced the development of early land-dwelling lifeforms on Earth. Normally, it’s quite difficult to date meteorite impacts since the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates often distorts and displaces geological evidence. However, in the case of the Bay of Stoer Formation, the presence of the mineral Zircon gave scientists a much smaller range for when the meteorite impact actually occurred.
A large zircon crystal
Previous studies have found that when Zircon is subjected to extremely high pressures, more than 20 gigapascals, to be exact, it turns into Reidite, an extremely rare mineral. For context, it takes about five gigapascals of pressure to turn carbon into diamonds. Scientists can then analyze these impacted crystals, known as “shocked zircon,” and return a more precise impact timeframe. Through these new methods, the researchers determined the meteorite impacted the Earth’s surface about 200 million years later than previously thought.
Another point of interest about this revision of scientists’ understanding of the Stoer formation is that it puts the time of the meteorite impact alongside some of the first freshwater eukaryotes ever discovered. These organisms were the predecessors of all land-dwelling life on Earth, and this new discovery presents new questions about the impacts’ effect on their evolution.
Want to learn more? Check out our Zircon specimens here, and our earliest life collection here!
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