Chicxulub Crater

Chicxulub Crater is an ancient impact crater buried underneath the Yucatan peninsula, with its center located approximately underneath the town of Chicxulub, Yucatán, Mexico. Later investigations suggested that this impact structure is dated from the late Cretaceous, about 65 million years ago. The meteorite's estimated size is about 10 km (6 mi) in diameter, releasing an estimated 4.3×1023 joules of energy (equivalent to 191,793 gigatons of TNT) on impact.

Related Topics:
Impact crater - Yucatan - Chicxulub, Yucatán - Mexico - Cretaceous - Joules - Gigatons of TNT

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The impact caused giant tsunamis in all directions. The emission of dust and particles caused environmental changes close to a nuclear winter, in which the surface of the Earth is totally covered by a cloud of dust for several years. (Pope, et al., 1997) This timing is in good agreement with the theory postulated by the physicist Luis Alvarez and his son Walter, a geologist, for the extinction of the dinosaurs. The Alvarezes postulated that the extinction of the dinosaurs, roughly contemporaneous with the K-T boundary, could have been caused by the impact of just such a large meteorite. This theory is now widely accepted by the scientific community.

Related Topics:
Tsunami - Nuclear winter - Physicist - Luis Alvarez - Walter - Geologist - Dinosaurs - K-T boundary

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The main evidence is a widespread, thin layer of iridium present in this geological boundary across the world. Iridium is a rare metal on Earth, but abundant in meteorites. It is thought that this impact event may have been partially or wholly responsible for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.

Related Topics:
Iridium - Impact event - Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event

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