A massive meteorite, called S2, first discovered in 2014 caused a tsunami bigger than any in known human history and boiled the oceans, scientists have discovered. The space rock, which was 200 times bigger from the one who wiped out the dinosaurs, fell to Earth when our planet was still in its infancy three billion years ago.

A team of scientists decided to go hiking to the impact site in South Africa in order to chip away at pieces of rock to understand the crash and what exactly happened.

According to the BBC, the team discovered details of what happened at the time of the impact and also from the investigation found evidence that proves that the massive asteroid impacts they not only brought destruction to Earth but also aided in may early life thrive.

“We know that after the Earth was first formed, there was still a lot of debris flying around in space that would have crashed into the Earth,” says Professor Nadja Drabon of Harvard University, lead author of the new research.

“But now we’ve discovered that life was really resilient after these giant impacts, and that it actually flourished and thrived,” he says.

The S2 meteorite it is much larger than the space rock we know more about and which led to the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. It was about 10 kilometers wide, or almost the height of Mount Everest.

The S2 meteorite it is 40-60 km wide and its mass was 50-200 times greater. It hit when Earth was still in its early years and looked very different. It was a water world with only a few continents protruding from the sea. Life was very simple as there were only microorganisms made up of single cells.

The impact site in the Eastern Barberton Greenbelt is one of the oldest places on Earth with meteorite crash debris.

Professor Drabon and her team traveled to the impact site looking for globular particles, or tiny fragments of rock from the impact. They were then taken to laboratories for analysis.

The team has now reconstructed exactly what meteorite S2 did when it crashed violently into Earth. It gouged out a 500 km crater and pulverized rocks that were ejected at incredibly fast speeds to form a cloud that circled the globe.

“Imagine a rain cloud, but instead of drops of water falling, it’s like drops of molten rock raining down from the sky,” says Professor Drabon.

A huge tsunami it would then have swept the entire globe, torn up the bottom of the sea and flooded the shores.

All this energy would have created massive amounts of heat causing the oceans to boil the evaporation of up to tens of meters of water. It would also have caused increase in air temperature up to 100 degrees Celsius.

The skies would have turned black, choked with dust and particles. Without sunlight to penetrate the darkness, simple life on land or in shallow water that relied on photosynthesis would have disappeared.

But what Professor Drabon and her team discovered next was surprising. The rocks showed that violent disturbances swept away nutrients like phosphorus and iron that fueled simple organisms.

“Life was not only resilient, but actually recovered very quickly and thrived,” he says.

“It’s like brushing your teeth in the morning. It kills 99.9% of the bacteria, but by nightfall it’s all back, right?’ he says.

The new findings suggest that the big impacts were like a giant fertilizer, sending life-essential ingredients like phosphorus around the world.

The tsunami that swept the planet would also have brought iron-rich water from the depths to the surface, giving the early microbes extra energy.

These findings reinforce the view among scientists that early life was actually aided by the violent succession of rocks hitting the Earth in its early years, Professor Drabon says.

“It seems that life after the impact encountered really favorable conditions that allowed it to flourish,” he explains.

The findings are published in the scientific journal PNAS.