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.

Part of a multiple impact?

In recent years, several other craters of around the same age as Chicxulub have been discovered, all between latitudes 20°N and 70°N. Examples include the Silverpit crater in the United Kingdom, and the Boltysh crater in Ukraine, both much smaller than Chicxulub but likely to have been caused by objects many tens of metres across striking the earth. This has led to the hypothesis that the Chicxulub impact may have been only one of several impacts that happened all at the same time.

Related Topics:
Silverpit crater - United Kingdom - Boltysh crater - Ukraine

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The collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994 proved that gravitational interactions can fragment a comet, giving rise to many impacts over a period of a few days if the comet should collide with a planet. Comets frequently undergo gravitational interactions with the gas giants, and similar disruptions and collisions are very likely to have occurred in the past. This scenario may have occurred on Earth 65 million years ago.

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Another crater thought to have been formed at the same time was the Shiva crater.

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