[Rockhounds] DATING CRATERS: WOLFE CREEK IS YOUNGER, METEOR CRATER OLDER, THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

How old are impact craters on Earth?

This is a hard question to answer, for a lot of reasons
<https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/dating-craters>. For one thing, big impacts
are rare, so craters don't get made very often. That's a good thing! But it
means we don't have lots of examples, so it can be difficult to work with
them.

For another, Earth is an active planet. Air, water, tectonics... these are
all sources of erosion, and after a few hundred thousand — or hundred
million — years, craters fade away. If it weren't for those factors, the
surface of the Earth would look like the surface of the Moon, saturated
with craters.

Nonetheless we do have some techniques to get absolute ages for craters (as
opposed to relative, where you can say this crater is older than that one).
But even then it can be tricky to get good numbers.

Cases in point
<https://www.port.ac.uk/news-events-and-blogs/news/wolfe-creek-crater-younger-than-previously-thought>:
Two of the youngest, large-ish, and well-preserved craters on Earth have
just been re-evaluated, and the ages we *thought* they were are most likely
off. Wolfe Creek crater in Australia is younger than thought, and the
iconic Meteor Crater in Arizona is older.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/dating-craters-wolfe-creek-is-younger-meteor-crater-older-than-previously-thought