We’ve discovered that a meteorite struck northwest Scotland 1 billion years ago, 200 million years later than previously thought. Our results are published today in the journal Geology.

This impact now aligns with some of Earth’s earliest known, land based, non-marine microbial fossils, and offers new insights into how meteorite strikes may have shaped our planet’s environment and life.

A rocky treasure trove The Torridonian rocks of northwest Scotland are treasured by geologists as some of the finest archives of the ancient lakes and river systems that existed a billion years ago.

Those water bodies were home to microbial ecosystems consisting of eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are single-celled organisms with complex internal structures that are the ancestors of all plants and animals.

But the Torridonian environments and their associated microbial communities were dramatically disrupted when a meteor slammed into the planet.