The Barringer Crater was created what, 50,000 years ago, and it's still in pretty good shape. It hit dry land, so erosion would be less than one that hit a marshy area.
Did they give the age of this Basra crater? They mentioned 4000 years, but was that the determined age of the crater?
This longer article at the Telegraph mentions this:
Yet another reason to topple Saddam's regime - so we can send in the archaeologists!The crater also appears to be, in geological terms, very recent. Dr Master said: "The sediments in this region are very young, so whatever caused the crater-like structure, it must have happened within the past 6,000 years."
Reporting his finding in the latest issue of the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, Dr Master suggests that a recent meteor impact is the most plausible explanation for the structure.
A survey of the crater itself could reveal tell-tale melted rock. "If we could find fragments of impact glass, we could date them using radioactive dating techniques," he said.