Birger Schmitz, a geologist in Lund, has found fossils of an extinct meteorite that collided with the Earth 470 million years ago in a quarry on Kinnekulle. The finding is deemed unique in the world.
The new meteorite called the East 65 and is chemically distinct from all currently known types of meteorites. Scientists call the find a “extinct meteorite” and believes when a meteorite whose parent body destroyed in ancient times.
Therefore, this type of meteorites never fall down on the earth, say the researchers, with Birger Schmitz tip. Analyses of chromium and oxygen isotopes from discovery allowed the scientists to conclude that East 65 is different from all previously known meteorites.
The discovery overturns the prevailing notion of meteorites. Birger Schmitz believes that the find indicates that the meteorite flux toward the earth may have been different 470 million years ago.
Different processes in space may have affected meteorites from different parts of the asteroid belt during different geological periods. During the Ordovician period, the number of collisions with the Earth have been a hundred times higher than today.
These collisions can in turn have created new living conditions for organisms, which have contributed to complex life forms on Earth.
More on the find in Nature Communications.
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