Overview
- Researchers report a bowl-shaped structure near Deqing in Guangdong measuring about 900 meters across and roughly 90 meters deep, preserved within a thick granite weathering crust.
- The site surpasses Russia’s 300-meter Macha structure as the largest crater known to have formed during the Holocene epoch.
- Planar deformation features in quartz record shock pressures of about 10–35 gigapascals, providing decisive evidence of an impact rather than a terrestrial process.
- Formation age is estimated from local soil-erosion rates to the early-to-mid Holocene, a timeline experts note is inferred and will require more precise radiometric dating.
- The impactor is concluded to have been a meteorite rather than a comet, the iron-versus-stony makeup remains unknown, and the find adds to roughly 200 confirmed impact craters worldwide.