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900‑Metre Holocene Meteorite Crater Discovered in Southern China — Largest in Current Epoch

A team of Chinese researchers has confirmed the Jinlin meteorite crater in Guangdong Province, southern China. At about 900 metres across, it is the largest known impact from the Holocene, three times larger than Russia’s 300‑metre Macha crater. Evidence includes planar deformation features in quartz, which require shock pressures of ~10–35 GPa. The impact was likely caused by a ~30‑metre asteroid striking at ~20 km/s and probably occurred within the last 10,000 years.

12:02 AM, 11/22/2025Science
900‑Metre Holocene Meteorite Crater Discovered in Southern China — Largest in Current Epoch

Scientists have identified a previously unnoticed meteorite crater in Guangdong Province, southern China. At roughly 900 metres across, the newly confirmed Jinlin structure is three times the diameter of the previous largest Holocene impact, the 300‑metre Macha crater in Russia.

The discovery, reported in the journal Matter and Radiation at Extremes, is notable because the crater remained well preserved in a region characterized by heavy rain, monsoons, and high humidity—conditions that typically erase impact evidence.

“This discovery shows that the scale of impacts of small extraterrestrial objects on the Earth in the Holocene is far greater than previously recorded,” said Ming Chen of the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research in Shanghai, the study’s lead author.

Researchers confirmed the impact origin by identifying microscopic planar deformation features (PDFs) in quartz grains collected at the site. PDFs form only under extreme shock pressures—roughly 10–35 gigapascals—and are widely accepted as diagnostic evidence of high‑energy extraterrestrial impacts rather than ordinary terrestrial processes.

Field evidence and modeling indicate the event involved a roughly 30‑metre‑wide asteroid striking a granite hillside at an estimated speed near 20 kilometres per second (about 45,000 miles per hour). The collision lofted weathered granite and soil into the air and deposited debris around the crater rim; in areas where weathered material was thin, the impact excavated into fresh granite bedrock.

Precise radiometric dating remains to be done, but the team used the local chemical weathering rate for granite—estimated at about 0.038 millimetres per year in Guangdong’s rainy, hilly terrain—together with the observed sizes of granite fragments to constrain the timing to the early‑to‑mid Holocene (likely within the last ~10,000 years).

Why this matters

The Jinlin crater joins the catalogue of roughly 200 confirmed terrestrial impact structures and suggests that significant impacts during the Holocene may be larger and more frequent than previously recorded. Each confirmed crater improves our understanding of how small extraterrestrial bodies continue to shape Earth’s surface and environment, even in recent geological time.

Further studies—including precise dating, geophysical surveys, and analysis of any meteoritic material—will refine the event’s age, energy, and local environmental effects.

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