2.5 million years ago near the coast of Antarctica in the ocean crashed an asteroid the size of a mountain. This led to an apocalyptic chain of events: first, the rain molten rock, and then a deadly tsunami that swept the Pacific ocean.

According to a group of Australian researchers, it was only the beginning. Soon came the long ice age caused the extinction of many large mammal species.

Meteor-Eltanin (named after a ship of the naval transport service of the USA, whose crew discovered the crater in 1964) is the only celestial body, which left an imprint in the form of deep depression. Such craters must be many (if only because the ocean covers the major part of the surface of the planet), but they are very hard to detect because of the large depth. And at this point the researchers found not only depression but microspheres with fragments of the meteorite.

The fall of the asteroid on land produces terrible destruction, but getting into the ocean and worse. Both land and water enveloping mist of water vapour, sulphur and dust, reaching the upper atmosphere. In addition, the rain of molten rock, tsunami, flood the shore almost all over the world (if in place of falling rises hundred-meter wave, be sure, she will reach the most distant shores). Local event is becoming global.

James Goff and his colleagues at the University of New South Wales (Australia) came to the conclusion that the fall of the meteorite Eltanin coincides with the formation of layers in Chile, Australia and Antarctica that are traditionally associated with relatively slow geological processes, and glaciation.

Already it is known that in the mid-to late Pliocene planet has cooled down. Mr. Goff simply proposed that the material ejected by the fall of Altunina the enormous height, made slowly changing the Earth's climate in a moment pass the critical level. Thus was launched the cycle of ice ages and interglacials, including led to the evolution of our own species to be halkomelem or anthracotheres turned out to be unprofitable, but the hominids, in contrast, has blossomed.

So thanks, Eltanin!