A ring could explain a mysterious arrangement of impact craters near the equator and might even have caused an ice age, according to a new study

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

“Over millions of years, material from this ring gradually fell to Earth, creating the spike in meteorite impacts observed in the geological record,” said Tomkins in a statement that accompanied the paper’s release. “We … see that layers in sedimentary rocks from this period contain extraordinary amounts of meteorite debris.”