Glassy rocks discovered in Australia proving the impact of a large meteorite 11 million years ago

In Australia rocks with fragments of natural glass have been discovered (tektites) which would prove the impact of a meteorite on the earth approximately 11 million years agowhose has not yet been found crater: this is the conclusion of a study recently published in the international scientific journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Experts have delimited the impact region in aunidentified area of ​​Australia as the exact location still remains unknown.

But then, how did they come to this conclusion? The answer lies in tektites. These are small fragments of glass natural formed following the fusion and to the next rapid cooling of terrestrial rocks during high-energy impacts of meteorites, comets or asteroids. During an extraplanetary impact, rocks at the collision site can melt due to temperatures extremely high. Lower case droplets of this molten material are then expelled into the atmospherewhere they rapidly cool and solidify, eventually falling back to the Earth’s surface. Tektites can also be found several hundred kilometers from the impact site.

On Earth, only a few tektite fields (or tektite strewn fields). These are found in theEurope centralin the’America northernin the’Central America and in the Ivory Coast. The largest tektite field, however, extends between theAsia and theAustralia covering over the 30% of the earth’s surface. The fragments found in this region are known as australasites and were formed following a meteorite impact that occurred approximately 780,000 years ago. These tektites have been known for over a century. Just think about that Charles Darwin he described an example already in 1844despite not knowing what it really was.

However, the new study, led by a research team fromUniversity of Aix-Marseille (France) and published last August 29, 2025, revealed that in the Australasian field there is a second type of tektitesdifferent from those already known both in chemical composition and age. In the study, the scientists adopted a multi-analytical approach, which involved the use of microscopy And tomography 3D X-ray to determine the morphology of glass fragments, different chemical analyses to define their composition in detail, e dating isotopic based on argon isotopes (⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar) to determine the age of formation.

Some of the analyzed samples show a content of silica generally lower than that of common Australasites. To this we add a higher nickel content and higher ratio values Na/K (sodium/potassium) – this last data had already been highlighted in a 1969 study. What is most surprising, however, is the age of formation of these tektite specimens, and therefore that of the meteoric impact itself, estimated at approximately 10.76 ± 0.05 million yearsi.e. significantly older than the well-known australasites. Based on this evidence, the researchers concluded that the tektites analyzed were formed in older times and under different conditions than the classical Australian ones. For this reason they coined a new name, anaguiteinspired by Aboriginal populations of the area in which they were found.

The extent of the anagiti’s distribution range would cover approximately 900 kilometres in the Australian territory, making it the third largest in the world. Although the data suggests a meteoric impact of colossal magnitude, no associated crater has so far been identified. The main hypothesis is that the crater is located in the island arcs related to subduction surrounding Australia.