Scientists have identified an impact crater formed in a granite mountain, which is covered by a dense weathered crust in southern China. The Jinlin Crater, situated in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, is among approximately 200 craters recognized worldwide and is estimated to be less than 11,700 years old.
Panoramic aerial drone image of Jinlin Crater taken on May 12, 2025. Image credit: Chen et al., doi: 10.1063/5.0301625.
Throughout Earth’s geological history, a variety of impact craters have emerged.
Nevertheless, due to tectonic movements and significant surface weathering, many ancient craters have been eroded, distorted, or covered.
Currently, around 200 impact craters have been documented globally.
Only four of these impact craters have been reported in China, all of which are in the northeastern region.
In contrast, southern China experiences a tropical to subtropical monsoon climate, with high rainfall, humidity, and temperatures that promote substantial chemical weathering.
The newly found impact structure, referred to as Jinlin Crater, is located in the low mountains and hills of northwestern Guangdong province, adjacent to Jinlin Waterside Village in Deqing County, Zhaoqing City.
With a diameter of 900 m, it stands as the largest known impact crater of the modern Holocene, significantly surpassing the 300 m Maka crater, which was previously the largest identified Holocene impact structure.
“This discovery indicates that the scale of small extraterrestrial object impacts on Earth during the Holocene is much greater than previously known,” remarked Dr. Ming Chen, a researcher at the Hyperbaric Science and Technology Center.
In this instance, the “small” impactor is believed to be a meteorite, rather than a comet, which would have resulted in a crater no less than 10 km wide.
However, Chen and his team have not yet established if the meteorite was composed of iron or stone.
One of the most intriguing aspects of this crater is its remarkable preservation, especially given the monsoons, heavy rainfall, and high humidity conditions of the region, which are typically conducive to erosion.
Within the granite layers that shield and conserve that impact structure, researchers uncovered numerous quartz fragments that exhibit distinctive microscopic characteristics known as planar deformation features. Geologists utilize these as indicators of some form of impact.
“On Earth, quartz planar deformation features can only be formed by intense shock waves generated from celestial body collisions, with formation pressures between 10 to 35 gigapascals. This shock effect cannot be replicated by geological processes on Earth,” explained Dr. Chen.
“It is widely accepted that over Earth’s history, every point on the Earth’s surface has experienced impacts from extraterrestrial objects with roughly equal probability.”
“However, geological variations have led to different erosion rates of these historical impact markers, with some vanishing completely.”
“This underscores the significance of the Jinlin Crater discovery.”
“Impact craters serve as genuine records of Earth’s impact history.”
Uncovering Earth impact craters can furnish us with a more objective basis for comprehending the distribution, geological evolution, and impact history and regulation of small extraterrestrial objects.
For more details, refer to the team’s paper published in the Journal on October 15, 2025, titled Matter and radiation at the limit.
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Ming Chen et al. 2026. Jinlin Crater, Guangdong, China: Impact origin confirmed. Matarajith. extreme 11, 013001; doi: 10.1063/5.0301625
Source: www.sci.news
