Molten glass rained down from the sky over parts of Southeast Asia,
Australia, Antarctica, and into the neighbouring ocean basins during
the Pleistocene, about 790,000 years ago. These glass occurrences, long recognized to be remnants of melt formed during meteorite impact, are known as the Australasian tektites. Their distribution defines the largest of at least four known strewn fields across
... [Show full abstract] the globe, strewn fields being regions over which tektite glass are scattered from what are thought to be single-impact events. The three other big tektite strewn fields are associated with known source craters, including the Bosumtwi (1.07 Ma, Ghana), Ries (15 Ma, Germany), and Chesapeake Bay (35.5 Ma, USA) impact structures (Glass and Simonson 2013). At only 790,000 years old, the Australasian tektite strewn field (Fig. 1) is both the youngest
and the largest known. Despite much effort, the source crater has yet
to be discovered. The search to locate it represents something akin to
a “holy grail” in impact cratering studies.
