What was the largest impact that Earth suffered except moon-forming?

[m1omg]

How big and when was the biggest asteroid/comet impact that our little Earth suffered?

[Blob]

Hum,
Vredefort crater is large...

but, there is some information and links in these two threads

http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=42414
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=47996

(You unfortunately do have to read them thoroughly).

[EDG]

Dunno. Earth has this habit of recycling its crust regularly due to plate tectonics .

There were undoubtedly other massive impacts around the time of the moon-forming one, but there's no evidence remaining on the surface anymore. All we have left are the remnants of the much smaller impact craters, usually on the continental shields that haven't changed much.

Here's a list of earth impact crater that we know about though - the biggest listed there is in south africa, is about 2 billion years old, and 300 km in diameter.

http://exobio.ucsd.edu/Space_Science...ct_craters.htm

[Blob]

Hum,
Here is another link
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=39409

"The Antarctic scatter ellipse is of enormous size by Earth standards, measuring some 2,092 kilometres by 3,862 kilometres. Melted rocky debris, blasted from such meteoroid craters upon impact and explosion, and known as tektites, may have been carried thousands of kilometres from the impact site."

@EDG
indeed;
but like i said, You unfortunately do have to read them thoroughly.

[AK]

For every giant basin-forming impact on the Moon during the Late Heavy Bombardment, there should be about 15 corresponding impacts on Earth due to its much larger gravitational cross-section. Considering the size of Mare Imbrium and South Pole Aitken Basin, probably some pretty hefty bombs. But we don't know anything about the Hadean, because we don't have any of it to study (to the absolute frustration of the Archean geologists in my program ).