Their findings appeared in the Thursday, Feb. 28 edition of the Journal of Geophysical Research published by the American Geophysical Union.

The significance of this conclusion is that the bombardment was so severe that it destroyed older rocks on Earth. Which, Kring says, is the reason why the oldest rocks found are less than 3.9 billion years old.

Additionally, they argue, impact-generated hydrothermal systems would have been excellent incubators for pre-biotic chemistry and the early evolution of life, consistent with previous work that shows life originated in hot water systems around or slightly before 3.85 billion years ago.

This same bombardment according to Kring and Cohen, affected the entire inner solar system, producing thousands of impact craters on Mercury, Venus, the Moon and Mars. Most of the craters in the southern hemisphere of Mars were produced during this event.

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