The largest asteroids ever

At the present time the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt is Ceres (asteroid number I). This asteroid is approximately spherical and has a recorded diameter (I) of 932.6±5.2 km. But there is no scientific justification for supposing that Ceres is the largest asteroid that has ever been in the belt. In this paper we show that the largest asteroids that ever existed probably had diameters of around 8600±800 km. There were about eight asteroids of this size. At that time, the belt contained about 640 asteroids larger than Ceres, and at least the most massive thirteen of these early asteroids became differentiated, forming metallic cores and rocky mantles