Researchers say they have found "unequivocal evidence" that a meteorite smashed into Earth 3.47 billion years ago, potentially affecting plate tectonics and creating conditions for life.

The discovery of a massive crater formed by the impact of a meteorite more than 3.5 billion years ago is changing the way scientists view the history of Earth

This week, geologists announced they discovered the world's oldest known impact crater. It's in Western Australia's ancient Pilbara region.

It was a respectable tenure, but the world’s oldest known meteorite site is no longer western Australia’s 2.2 billion-year-old, 43-mile-wide Yarrabubba crater. Researchers at Curtin University and the Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA) say the new recordholder is located about 660 miles north in the country’s Pilbara region.

Researchers have discovered the oldest meteorite impact crater known to science in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. The feature is more than one billion years older than the previous first-place contender,

A rocky stretch in Western Australia's Pilbara, near Earth's earliest-confirmed lifeforms, was hit by a meteorite about 3.5 billion years ago.

It suggests that the world was previously hit by huge impacts that we may not know about, and the craters left behind might have been the place that life on Earth began. “We know large impacts were common in the early solar system from looking at the Moon,