The Australasian tektite event
An impact somewhere in Southeast Asia scatters glass across a tenth of the Earth's surface.
- When
- Known to
- ± 12 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
Around 788,000 years ago an object strikes mainland Southeast Asia hard enough to melt and fling target rock across an area stretching from southern China to Antarctica and from Madagascar to the Philippines — the largest and youngest tektite strewn field known, covering roughly a tenth of the planet's surface. Despite decades of searching, the crater has never been definitively located; the leading candidate is a buried structure beneath volcanic cover in Laos.