Dallas ? A meteorite hit Earth 380 million years ago with such force that it may have been responsible for the great extinction that occurred around that time, researchers have found.

In Friday’s issue of the journal Science, geologists from Louisiana, Morocco and the University of Texas at Arlington describe the newfound remains of an extraterrestrial impact in northern Africa. The impact took place at the same time that many marine animals died off suggesting the events are related, the scientists say.

If confirmed, the work would be the second time that researchers have linked an extraterrestrial impact with a mass extinction on Earth.

The Chicxulub crater in Mexico is thought to be the scar of a giant space rock that hit 65 million years ago, indirectly killing off the dinosaurs and most other animals. Some scientists have proposed an extraterrestrial cause for a mass extinction 250 million years ago, based on a different type of geological evidence, but that has not yet been accepted.

“There are a lot more of these extinctions that are related to impacts than we have ever realized,” said Rex Crick, a geologist at UTA and member of the research team.

To help with the project, Crick called on geologist Brooks Ellwood, a professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, who specializes in the magnetism of ancient rocks.

In the desert near Rissani, Morocco, Ellwood found something unusual in the rocks’ magnetism — an abrupt change in the layers that preserved the evidence of the mass extinction. He found a similar change in rocks in Oman that dated from the dinosaur-killing impact 65 million years ago.

Armed with the magnetic hints, the scientists began searching for other signs of an impact. Eventually, they turned up several lines of evidence, including quartz grains “shocked” by the impact; tiny rock beads that resemble those sprayed outward by an impact; and a shift in carbon chemistry that indicated environmental disaster.

The researchers can’t say exactly where the meteorite hit. But they say it’s the best explanation yet for the mid-Devonian extinction, in which many mollusks, ammonites and other marine animals died out.

“Had this impact happened when there were terrestrial organisms around, it would have been a major event,” Crick said.