Scientists have found a crescent-shaped meteorite impact crater in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, reportedly the largest meteorite impact crater on Earth in 100,000 years. The finding was published in a research article on the scientific journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science on July 29, co-authored by Chinese scientists from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and scientists from the University of Vienna in Austria. Photo: Sina Weibo

Scientists have found a crescent-shaped meteorite impact crater in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, reportedly the largest meteorite impact crater on Earth in 100,000 years. 

The finding was published in a research article on the scientific journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science on July 29, co-authored by Chinese scientists from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and scientists from the University of Vienna in Austria. 

The crater, the Yilan Crater, is centered 19 kilometers northwest of the town of Yilan County, Heilongjiang Province, and is located in the hilly area of the southeastern margin of the Lesser Xing'an Range, one of the best-preserved forest areas in China, according to the article. 

The Yilan Crater is a circular geological structure, 1.85 kilometers in diameter and 579 meters in depth. Only the southern third of the crater rim is missing, while the other rim sections are all well preserved, with a maximum elevation above the present crater floor of 150 meters, it said. 

The structure is a crescent-shaped meteorite impact crater, which is very rare on Earth, said Chen Ming, one of the authors of the article and a research fellow from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry. 

The Yilan Crater is the largest meteorite impact crater on Earth in 100,000 years, reported Xinhua News Agency. The article noted that the crater was exposed in the Early Jurassic granite of the regional Paleozoic-Mesozoic granite complexes. 

China so far has two confirmed impact structures. The first one is relatively small, the Xiuyan Crater in Northeast China's Liaoning Province confirmed in 2010. It's 1,800 meters in diameter and about 150 meters deep. 

Global Times