Heat from the impact of the S2 meteorite that struck Earth billions of years ago caused the topmost layer of the ocean to boil off, a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has discovered.
S2 also triggered a tsunami bigger than any in known human history, revealed the team of scientists led by Nadja Drabon, Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University.
They studied rock samples retrieved from the impact site in the Barberton Greenstone belt of South Africa to better understand the consequences of that massive asteroid strike for our planet. S2, first discovered in 2014, is estimated to have been 40-60km wide, with a mass much greater than the space rock linked with the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. It is believed that this space rock gouged out a 500km-wide crater.
Analysis of the sedimentology, geochemistry, and carbon isotope compositions left behind by the meteorite revealed that the impact 3.26 billion years ago also heated up the atmosphere by up to 100C, while the cloud of dust shut down all photosynthetic activity.
However, besides the destruction, the impact also helped early microbes thrive. Nutrients like phosphorus and iron that fed simple organisms were churned up by the tsunami from the depths to the surface.
“We know that after Earth first formed there was still a lot of debris flying around space that would be smashing into Earth… But now we have found that life was really resilient in the wake of some of these giant impacts, and that it actually bloomed and thrived,” Drabon said in a media statement.