Context· moderateYDIH-E023
Hiawatha discovered: a 31-km crater with an initially open age
- what the source states
- Airborne radar sounding revealed a ~31-km-wide impact crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier in northwest Greenland; the discovery paper argued the crater could be as old as the Pleistocene's start or as young as its end, explicitly leaving a Younger Dryas age possible.
- what we infer
- Why the crater mattered to this case: for four years it was the candidate smoking gun under the ice sheet the original hypothesis had pointed at. Recorded as context because its relevance was extinguished by the direct dating that followed.
- limitations
- The discovery paper's age discussion was explicitly provisional, pending direct dating.