A ring could explain a mysterious arrangement of impact craters near the equator and might even have caused an ice age, according to a new study

“Over millions of years, material from this ring gradually fell to Earth, creating the spike in meteorite impacts observed in the geological record,” said Tomkins in a statement that accompanied the paper’s release. “We … see that layers in sedimentary rocks from this period contain extraordinary amounts of meteorite debris.”

Earth and Saturn might be a lot more similar than previously thought. In a new study, a team of researchers suggests that 466 million years ago, a ring system made up of asteroid remnants may have surrounded our planet,

And now, a new study published in the scientific journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters seems to show that Earth itself once had a similar ring. The new study asserts that Earth's ring formed around 466 million years ago and stuck around for around 40 million years before dissipating.

C ould Earth once have had a planetary ring like the ones around Saturn? Scientists from Monash University in Australia think so. In a recent paper they identify 450m-year-old craters that lie close to Earth’s historical equator.

Earth might have had a ring system in the past, similar to those of Saturn. Scientists drew these conclusions based on the analysis of the locations of craters on our planet. Scientists, based on the analysis of asteroid craters,