Juan Antonio Sanchez Garrido claims that what he found was a crater. It is located in southern Spain, in the province of Almería. To date, more than 200 such structures have been identified worldwide, but none have been found on the Iberian Peninsula. An international team of representatives from the University of Almeria, the Astrobiology Center in Madrid, Lund University and the University of Copenhagen are behind the latest developments.
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We believe the event occurred about 8 million years ago. We studied many aspects of geology, mineralogy, geochemistry and geomorphology in this region. The Alhabia and Tabernas basins in this area are filled with sediments dating from 5 to 23 million years old and located on older metamorphic rocks. Much of the impact structure is buried by more recent sediments, but erosion exposed them and made possible research.
Garrido explains
The crater, which was found in southern Spain, is about 4 km in diameter
What do we know about the hole? It is about 4 kilometers in diameter with an additional structure of about 20 kilometers in diameter around it. It was also formed as a result of the impact that caused the collapse of sediment layers. One evidence of the impact is the appearance of signs of deformation on the grains under the influence of very high pressures of 10-30 GPa.
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As the researchers explained, if it can be confirmed that it is in fact a crater, then it will be of great value not only from the point of view of science, but also from the point of view of tourism. Of course, the Spanish structure would not be the oldest or largest. In terms of size, the dominant true feature is the South African Vredefort, which has a diameter of about 160 kilometers. In contrast, the outer ring is almost twice as large. For the oldest impact crater, the Russian Suavjarwi crater, which is about 2.4 billion years old, is one. These types of objects are a valuable source of information because they contain evidence of the collisions that formed the Earth. It also provides data on the birth and evolution of the entire solar system.
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