The First Impact Crater Found Underneath the Greenland Ice Sheet (2 of 9) (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

The First Impact Crater Found Underneath the Greenland Ice Sheet (2 of 9)

Caption

Map of the bedrock topography beneath the ice sheet and the ice-free land surrounding the Hiawatha impact crater. The structure is 31 kilometers wide, with a prominent rim surrounding the structure. In the central part of the impact structure, an area with elevated terrain is seen, which is typical for larger impact craters. Calculations show that in order to generate an impact crater of this size, the Earth was struck by a meteorite more than one kilometer wide. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Nov. 14th, 2018, issue of Science Advances, published by AAAS. The paper, by K.H. Kjær at University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues was titled, "A large impact crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier in northwest Greenland."

Credit

[Credit: Natural History Museum of Denmark, Cryospheric Sciences Lab, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA]

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