Did a crashing meteor kick-start Ice Ages?

A gigantic meteor collided with the earth about 2.5 million years ago, generating the mother of all tsunamis, hundreds of metres high, possibly plunging the planet into the Ice Ages, an Australian study says. Most scientists may have overlooked Eltanin meteor's potential for immediate catastrophic impact, or its capacity to destabilize the entire planet's climate system, when the 2,000 metre object crashed in the southern Pacific Ocean. "This is the only known deep-ocean impact event on the planet and its largely been forgotten because there's no obvious giant crater to investigate, as there would have been if it had hit a landmass," says James Goff, professor at The University of New South Wales' (UNSW) Australia-Pacific Tsunami Research Centre. Goff led the study. "But consider that we're talking about something the size of a small mountain crashing at very high speed into very deep ocean, between Chile and Antarctica," adds Goff, the Journal of Quaternary Science reports.Click here for full story