More than a kilometer wide, the footprint was hidden under sedimentary deposits on the mountainside for millions of years. The first thing noticed after the discovery was the elliptical shape. According to scientists, this is the only known example of an asteroid falling into a mountain range.

Almost two hundred impact craters are known in the world. Most likely, there are many more of these, but they are not always easy to spot. For example, one of the largest and most famous craters, Chicxulub in Mexico, cannot be seen from the air, but was discovered during research at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico: it has a large arc. It turned out that it continued on land, forming a circle with a diameter of about 180 kilometers.

Recall that this is the trail of the same asteroid that, according to scientists, “killed the dinosaurs”, that is, caused the mass extinction 66 million years ago. The diameter of the celestial body that collapsed at that time was about 8-10 kilometers.

Almost all terrestrial asteroid “tracks” have a round shape. As described in the magazine article Extreme Matter and Radiation Chinese researchers say that a celestial body must fall at an angle of less than 10 degrees for an elliptical crater to form.

Such examples are: In Argentina, a collection of extremely tall structures, approximately 10 thousand years old, is observed in the Rio Cuarte crater. However, some scientists believe that these are not percussion formations.

In any case, the recently discovered Hailin crater in the urban area of ​​the same name in northwestern China is considered by researchers to be a clear trace of the fall of a celestial body, and this trace is oval. This does not indicate a low angle of incidence: The asteroid simply hit a highly inclined surface and crashed into a mountainside. As scientists emphasize, this is the first known case of an impact crater in a mountain range.

The diameter of the crater if measured along the slope is 1360 meters. It reaches a depth of 183 meters. Despite its size, the crater was discovered only after careful study of satellite images and analysis of geological data: it had been covered with sediments for millions of years.

Since the Changbai Ridge was not formed more than 20 million years ago, as geologists have determined, it is not possible for the crater to be older. It is difficult to determine exactly when this asteroid fell. Ming Chen, one of the authors of the new study, noted that the discovery of the Hailin crater increases the possibility of such an object falling in the future. By the way, it turns out that this is only the fourth asteroid track discovered in the entire Chinese mainland.