40Ar/39Ar thermochronology of the fossil LL6-chondrite from the Morokweng crater, South Africa

A single multi-grain aliquot yielded an inverse isochron age of 625 ± 163 Ma. This suggests a major in-space collisional event at this time. We have modeled the diffusion of 40Ar∗ within the meteorite and plagioclase during and after the ∼145 Ma impact on Earth to tentatively explain why pre-terrestrial impact 40Ar∗ has been preserved within the plagioclase grains. The ∼145 Ma terrestrial impact age is recorded in the low-retentivity sites of the meteorite plagioclase grains that yielded a composite inverse isochron age at 141 ± 15 Ma and thus, confirms that age information about major (terrestrial or extraterrestrial) impacts can be recorded in the K-rich mineral phases of a meteorite and measured by the 40Ar/39Ar technique. More studies on fossil meteorites need to be carried out to understand if the rough 0.6 Ga age proposed here corresponds to major LL-chondrite asteroid population destructions or, rather, to an isolated collision event.