The first Younger Dryas impact surface feature identified?


In a new paper, Fitzenreiter et al. (2025) may have just located the first known surface impact feature of the Younger Dryas impact. It's near Perkins, Louisiana. The feature is a surface depression which fills with water on a seasonal basis, i.e. a seasonal lake. Clearly, it's not a crater. But that's ok, as the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis suggests the event was caused by a multitude of comet fragments and not a single large and dense impactor. So the YDIH doesn't need craters, although there may well be some associated with it.

The surface feature is not very large. It's suggested to have been caused by a low altitude airburst, or touch-down airburst, that provided sufficient heat and force to scar the landscape below without forming a traditional crater. Such events are thought to be more common than crater-forming impacts, but evidence for them is harder to find (due to the lack of an obvious crater).

While the paper details copious geochemical evidence for an impact event near this site, does this necessarily mean this surface feature was generated by the impact? Could it have a non-impact origin?

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