About 35 million years ago an asteroid about 5 to 8 kilometers in diameter, travelling at a speed of about 15 to 20 kilometers per second slammed into the area that is now known as the Tamyr Peninsula of northern Siberia, Russia. [1] The energy delivered by this hypervelocity impact was powerful enough to instantly melt thousands of cubic kilometers of rock and blast millions of metric tons of ejecta high into the air. Some of that ejecta landed on other continents. The explosion produced a 100 kilometer-wide impact crater with a rim of deformed rock up to 20 kilometers...