A recently discovered impact crater in China is among the best-preserved ever found, offering researchers new insight into how space rocks shaped our present-day Earth.
The Jinlin crater site in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, China, was uncovered by researchers from Shanghai and Guangzhou, as revealed in a new paper published in Matter and Radiation at Extremes. It lies on a hillside, with the initial impact feature remarkably well preserved within the area’s thick granite crust.
Young Impact Craters
To date, only about 200 impact craters have been confirmed by geologists, making Jinlin one of a rare group of sites that offer insight into the cosmic forces that have impacted our planet over time. Notably, the nearby soil erosion measurements indicate that the feature is quite recent on geological scales, correlating to the early-to-mid Holocene, roughly 11,700 years ago. In more colloquial terms, the impact event occurred sometime around the end of the last ice age.
In addition to its youth, the crater is also extremely sizable. Before Jinlin’s discovery, the largest known Holocene impact structure was the Macha crater in Russia, measuring 300 meters in diameter. Jinlin dwarfs this at an astounding 900 meters, three times the size of the Macha.
“This discovery shows that the scale of impacts of small extraterrestrial objects on the Earth in the Holocene is far greater than previously recorded,” said lead author Ming Chen of the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research.
Despite the researcher’s descriptor of the object as “small,” the impact crater was over 9 kilometers wide. They believe the object was a meteorite rather than a comet, but remain uncertain whether it was made of iron or stone.
Extreme Weather and Extreme Events
While the terrific violence of the impact left a permanent mark on the planet’s surface, local conditions should have made such a clear preservation highly unlikely. This region of China is prone to powerful monsoons, supported by heavy rainfall and high humidity that should soften the soil and encourage erosion. However, layers of tough granite endured over the millennia to protect the Jinlin crater from wear, leaving the researchers with a unique window on this ancient event.
Of particular interest is what was found within that granite. Many quartz deposits around the crater exhibited a common signature of extraterritorial impact sites: planar deformation features.
“On the Earth, the formation of planar deformation features in quartz is only from the intense shockwaves generated by celestial body impacts, and its formation pressure ranges from 10 to 35 gigapascals, which is a shock effect that cannot be produced by any geological process of the Earth itself,” said Chen.
Luck of the Draw
Statistically, any point on the Earth’s surface is just as likely as any other to be on the receiving end of an impact event. However, the ways any given area on Earth may respond to such an event based on its terrain and geological makeup are highly variable.
The geological materials present at the site, local weather conditions, and the presence of water each alter the degree of erosion. Many such impact sites have likely disappeared entirely, their scars on the planet’s surface healed by time and natural processes. Keeping this in mind, Jinlin is especially significant given the likelihood of an impact event occurring in a region so well suited to its preservation.
“The impact crater is a true record of Earth’s impact history,” said Chen. “The discovery of the Earth impact crater can provide us with a more objective basis for understanding the distribution, geological evolution, and impact history and regulation of small extraterrestrial bodies.”
The paper, “Jinlin Crater, Guangdong Province, China: Impact Origin Confirmed,” appeared in Matter and Radiation at Extremes on November 12, 2025.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.