A new study has found that the massive 19-mile-wide Hiawatha crater in Greenland is much older than was previously thought.
The crater underneath the northwestern ice sheet of the island was first discovered in 2015 and initially believed to have been some 13,000 years old but the new research that was published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Science Advances suggests that the crater was in fact formed 58 million years ago when a meteorite hit Earth.
At the time, researchers pinpointed that Greenland was home to a temperate rainforest, not the ice and snow that now blanket the island, according to Space.com. The asteroid that created the crater impacted earth with a force estimated to be several million times stronger than that of an atomic bomb, the outlet noted.
The discovery was made by the Statens Naturhistoriske Museum and Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen, as well as the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.
Scientists were able to determine the actual age of the crater by analyzing its sand grains and stones, according to USA Today. A laser was used to heat the sand grains until they released the gas argon, which was used to reveal the crater's age.
"I used a laser to release argon gas that had accumulated in the sand grain by radioactive decay from a rare isotope of potassium known as potassium-40," said Michael Storey, one of the lead scientists on the study.
"The argon gas was then measured on a very sensitive instrument known as a mass spectrometer, which allowed me to determine the age of the grain. It's a bit like carbon dating but with this technique we can work out the age of even the oldest rocks on Earth."
To confirm the crater's age, another dating method known as uranium lead was used. The method involves analyzing stones from the crater for the mineral zirconium and using it to determine the age, said Gavin Kenny, the other leading scientist on the study.
He explained that over time uranium turns into lead. By looking at the ratio of the uranium and lead in zircon crystals in the stones formed, the team could determine the crater's age.
Kenny said the strength of the new research made him "confident" in what he and his team dated the crater.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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