Approximately 600 million years ago, what is now Idaho was located far away from its
modern location in the outer reaches of the Antarctic Circle in the southern hemisphere.
Very little of what would later become the state was located above sea level, as the
area was covered by a shallow ocean which contained many alien looking creatures.
It was during this time that one of the planet's largest ever impact events occurred.
The impact in question left behind a 97 kilometer or 60 mile wide crater in the ground which
is today known as Beaverhead Crater.
Oddly enough, the area shown on screen where the surface exposures of this crater exist
is not actually where the crater originated.
Over hundreds of millions of years, much of its deposited rock migrated 30 miles to the
northeast.
The modern surface exposures of Beaverhead Crater are located in central Idaho where
part of its associated rock crosses over the border with Montana.
I want to note that although this crater received a preliminary age of 600 million years old,
it could be as little as 500 million years old or as much as 1 billion years in age.
This video assumes that the former figure is correct and explores the possibility that
it may be linked with a major mass extinction event.
Approximately 600 million years ago, a 9 kilometer or 5.6 mile wide asteroid was on a collision
course with Earth.
As it approached the planet, it was further accelerated by the pull of both the sun and
Earth's gravity.
Finally entering the planet's upper atmosphere, it was travelling at 18 kilometers per second
or 40,000 miles per hour.
At the time, the earth was slightly warmer than it is today, as average temperatures
were 4 degrees Celsius or 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer.
The most complex animals at the time were a group of unusual life forms called Charnia.
Moments later, a powerful explosion occurred as the fragmented asteroid impacted the ground,
releasing an immense amount of energy equivalent to the detonation of 40 million megatons of
TNT.
This powerful explosion pulverized a large section of water and crust over a vast area,
generating a magnitude 9.7 earthquake while also triggering immense tsunamis.
Due to the intense thermal radiation, any creature within a 1050 kilometer or 650 mile
radius burst into flame.
A powerful shockwave subsequently raced outwards in all directions, causing wind speeds of
at least 90 miles per hour or 145 kilometers per hour to reach everywhere in a 2050 kilometer
radius.
As large fragments of ground were thrown high into the atmosphere, they later fell back
to the ground, forming secondary craters and tektites.
After the ash cleared, what remained was a 60 mile wide and 12 mile deep impact crater
in a large submarine continental shelf.
What had just formed was one of the 5 largest impact craters on the planet.
Although not necessarily linked, the margin of error on the age of this impact crater
causes it to overlap with a mass extinction event whose cause remains a mystery.
Approximately 542 million years ago, the unusual life forms of the Edicaran period largely
went extinct in the end Ediacaran mass extinction event.
This extinction was associated with the sudden disappearance of oxygen in the majority of
the world's oceans, which could have been triggered due to a massive impact.
After all, this impact event released 40% of the energy the asteroid which wiped out
the dinosaurs released.
Regardless, numerous species were wiped out, causing a void in many niches in biology.
The subsequent so called "Cambrian explosion" occurred due to this void, as long term evolution
lead to many new creatures which filled these voids.
In the hundreds of millions of years since, the top 10 miles of the crust has shifted
30 miles to the northeast as part of a massive thrust fault.
This caused the surface exposures which resulted from the impact event to partially shift into
the state of Montana.
These surface deposits included abundances of shocked quartz which only form from asteroid
impacts and so called "shatter cones" which are also unique to large impact events.
Although the crater rim is no longer visible, proof still remains of this once vast crater.
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