Mahuika crater is a submarine bolide impact crater, 20±2 kilometers wide and over 153 meters deep, on the New Zealand continental shelf at 48.3°S, 166.4°E, named for the Maori god of fire. It was discovered by Dallas Abbott and her colleagues from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of the Columbia University.
Around the year 1500, the natives of New Zealand abandoned their southern coastal settlements. It has been supposed that an earthquake-induced tsunami was the cause. However, such a tsunami would have to have been some five times larger than any other in the area to account for the geological evidence, both in New Zealand and on Australia's east coast. In a presentation at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in November 2003, Abbott suggests that a bolide impact would explain both the geological and anthropological evidence better than an earthquake.
Gavin Menzies, author of the book 1421: the Year China Discovered the New World, suggests that the bolide was a fragment of Comet Napier and Clube and that it struck during October 1422, the exact time necessary to wipe out the portion of his hypothetical Chinese exploratory fleet commanded by Zhou Man.
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