Blue Collar Scientist

On Thursday, University of Oxford reported on the discovery of the largest impact crater in Britain. The 1.2 billion year old impact event is believed to have taken place near the northwest Scottish town of Ullapool.

According to the release, material long believed to be volcanic in origin turned out on closer inspection to be an ejecta blanket from the impact. The ejecta zone is about 50 kilometers across.

Analysis of the material found the tell-tale iridium concentrations characteristic of large impact ejecta (and most famously associated with the Chicxulub crater, the KT boundary impactor that contributed heavily to the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other taxa). They also observed shock fracturing in some of the samples.

Apparently some of the ejecta blanket is exposed on the west coast of Scotland, which is pretty nice. Most impact events on Earth have been covered by more recent formations, and impact materials can only be accessed by fairly expensive drilling. To have the material exposed, and in a relatively convenient location to visit, is pretty nice for those studying impact geology.