Jinlin crater, Guangdong Province, China: Impact origin confirmed

The newly identified Jinlin crater in southern China lies on a hillside covered by a thick granite weathering crust. It appears as a slightly elliptical bowl-shaped depression with a diameter of 820–900 m. The structure is a tilted impact crater, showing a maximum rim height difference of about 200 m and an apparent depth of 90 m. The crater rim is composed mainly of granite weathered soil and a small amount of granite fragments, while the bottom of the crater is filled with the same mixture of granite weathered soil and granite fragments. Planar deformation features in quartz grains from the rock fragments of the crater provide decisive evidence for its impact origin. The impact event is inferred to have taken place during the Holocene.