Researchers at UT Austin just redated the Ames impact crater (10 miles wide, subsurface) and shifted its formation timeline by 100 million years. New dating places it at 372 million years ago, syncing it with the Late Devonian extinction event that annihilated most marine species. This recalibration matters because it strengthens the impact-extinction correlation hypothesis. Previously, the Ames crater was thought to be ~470 million years old, making it temporally disconnected from major extinction events. Now it's a candidate trigger for one of Earth's Big Five mass extinctions. The dating method likely used radiometric analysis of shocked minerals or melt rock samples. This is huge for impact geology and extinction modeling—adds another data point to the "cosmic bombardment shaped evolution" narrative.