A new international study is looking at the impact of asteroid collisions on the evolution of life on Earth.<\/p>\n
Research leader, Â鶹ֱ²¥ of Technology’s Dr Fred Jourdan, is working with researchers from the United States and Germany to review the age data on the Earth’s known impact craters.<\/p>\n
“When we look back millions of years, it can be difficult to pinpoint the precise cause of mass extinction events,” Dr Jourdan said.<\/p>\n
“Proving a cause-effect relationship between mass extinction and its origins requires fairly precise dates, which are currently available for only a small proportion of asteroid impacts.<\/p>\n
“During our research, we have discovered that the ages of most major craters could not be accurately identified<\/p>\n
“This means that they cannot be attributed to any of the known mass extinction events.”<\/p>\n
Currently, out of 174 known major impact craters, only 11 have been accurately dated.<\/p>\n
“Based on these 11 craters, we can only match one with a known mass extinction – the extinction of dinosaurs about 65 million years ago,” he said.<\/p>\n
Dr Jourdan, a Research Fellow in Curtin’s Department of Applied Geology, said the dinosaur extinction was also ambiguous because major volcanic eruptions occurred in India at the same time.<\/p>\n
“Of course, the asteroid falls that have created large impact craters must have had significant regional effect on life, but it seems that they rarely cause worldwide extinctions,” he said.<\/p>\n
Australia has 26 confirmed impact craters, of which 10 are located in Western Australia.<\/p>\n
“So far, none of the Australian impact craters have had their age precisely determined,” Dr Jourdan said.<\/p>\n
“At this point we only have an estimate of their ages.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The age of major impacts are being investigated by Curtin researchers by carefully dating impact rocks using radioactive techniques.<\/p>\n
The study has been published in a special section of Earth and Planetary Science Letters (Frontiers), which publishes only four landmark research papers each year.<\/p>\n
Contact:<\/strong> Fred Jourdan; Research Fellow; Curtin; 0424 174 984; F.Jourdan@curtin.edu.au<\/a> OR Shaun Ratcliff; Public Relations Coordinator; Curtin; 08 9266 9085; 0401 103 755; s.ratcliff@curtin.edu.au<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new international study is looking at the impact of asteroid collisions on the evolution of life on Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4275,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1066],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-17269","media-release","type-media-release","status-publish","hentry","category-research","tag-sstc"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":[{"title":"","qualification":"","link":"","description":"","faculty":""}],"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}},"experts":false},"featured_image":false,"author_meta":{"first_name":"Curtin","last_name":"University","display_name":"Â鶹ֱ²¥"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/17269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/media-release"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/17269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17269"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=17269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}