“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.”

Earth and Saturn might be a lot more similar than previously thought. In a new study, a team of researchers suggests that 466 million years ago, a ring system made up of asteroid remnants may have surrounded our planet,

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.