The ring would have gradually fallen to Earth as meteorites, correlating to a spike of impacts seen in the geological record.

Researchers have found evidence suggesting that our planet may have once had a ring system around 466 million years ago.

A weird number of craters are located close to the equator, and the odds that this is random are incredibly low, researchers say.

I f astronomers had been walking the Earth 466 million years ago, they may have had something special to see. The moon and the planets and the stars and the sun would have looked

To reach that surprisingly conclusion, scientists studied the positions of 21 asteroid impact craters during the Ordovician period – the second of six periods in the

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.

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.

During a tumultuous period for our planet around 466 million years ago, Earth was pelted with meteorites and rocked by tsunamis. But geologists have uncovered some strange things about this moment in history.