University of Minnesota discovers ancient meteor crash site in Inver Grove Heights

INVER GROVE HEIGHTS, Minn. (FOX 9) – College of Minnesota geologists found the positioning of a meteor strike in Inver Grove Heights that dates again tons of of tens of millions of years.

In a launch revealed final month, the college says the crater seems to be about 350 toes beneath the town and about 2.5 miles extensive. The impression space lies on the southern border of the town, close to the Mississippi River, and consists of the Pine Bend Bluffs Scientific and Pure Space on the river’s edge. For reference, researchers say they consider this crater can be 11 instances the scale of the well-known Meteor Crater in Arizona.

Researchers say it seems the huge meteor struck the earth round 490 million years in the past, placing it close to the tip of the Cambrian interval.

Crater co-discoverer Julia Steenberg says that is an unimaginable discovery. There are solely about 190 recognized meteor impression websites throughout the earth.

“I’ve been mapping and finding out the subsurface geology of Minnesota for the final 13 years … and haven’t come throughout one thing as distinctive as this earlier than,” crater co-discoverer Julia Steenberg states within the launch.