The devastation of a giant meteorite impact on early Earth may have allowed life to flourish, new research suggests.
A study of the remnants of a 3.26 billion-year-old impact reveals that microbial life — the only type of life at that time — may have ultimately benefited from the impact of a meteorite 50 to 200 times larger than the one that killed off the nonavian dinosaurs. While destruction reigned immediately after the impact, the meteorite and a resulting tsunami ultimately released nutrients that were crucial to microbes, the researchers reported.
