(CNN) One of the largest known meteorites to hit Earth struck nearly 800,000 years ago, but the exact spot where it smashed into our planet has been a mystery -- until now.

The crater may lie beneath lava in a 910 cubic kilometer (218 cu mi) area of the Bolaven plateau volcanic field in the southeast Asian nation of Laos, according a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal

meteorite is a an object from space that survives a trip through the atmosphere and falls on the Earth's surface. The meteorite that crashed into Earth over 790,000 years ago was 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) wide, and the impact was so great that debris was flung across Asia, Australia, and Antarctica.

The first clues leading to the impact site came from small, pebble-like glassy objects called tektites. Scientists believe tektites formed from Earth material that melted upon meteorite impact and were thrown into our atmosphere, before falling back to the ground.

The crater may lie beneath the Bolaven plateau volcanic field in Laos.

"Their existence means that the impacting meteorite was so large and its velocity so fast that it was able to melt the rocks that it hit," Professor Kerry Sieh, principal investigator with the Earth Observatory of Singapore and one of the paper's authors, told CNN.

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