Baptistina family

The Baptistina family is an asteroid family that was probably produced by the breakup of an asteroid 170 km (110 mi) across 80 million years ago following an impact with a smaller body. The two largest presumed remnants of the parent asteroid are main-belt asteroids 298 Baptistina and 1696 Nurmela.

The Baptistina family may consist of uncommon carbonaceous chondrite asteroids and meteoroids in similar orbits. Many mountain-sized fragments from the collision would have leaked into the inner solar system through orbital resonances with Mars and Jupiter, causing a prolonged series of asteroid impacts. Previously this collision was believed to have occurred about 160 million years ago, and many impacts between 100 and 50 million years ago were attributed to it. However, new data in 2011 from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer revised the date of the proposed collision which broke up the parent asteroid to about 80 million years ago.

Break-up and suspected impacts