| Chicxulub Crater |
Website Links For Crater |
Information AboutChicxulub Crater |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT CHICXULUB CRATER | |
| astroblemes | |
| craters of mexico | |
| cretaceous craters | |
| extinction events | |
| natural history of the yucatán | |
| natural history of the caribbean | |
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Chicxulub Crater ( buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula , with its center located approximately underneath the town of Chicxulub , Yucatán , Mexico . Investigations suggest that this impact structure is dated from the late Cretaceous Period , about 65 Million Years Ago . Thus the meteorite associated with the crater is Implicated In Causing The Extinction of the Dinosaur s as suggested by the K-T Boundary . IMPACT SPECIFICS The Meteorite 's estimated size was about 10 km (6 mi) in diameter, releasing an estimated 500 Zetta Joule s (5.0×1023 Joule s) of energy, approximately 100 Teraton s of TNT (1014 tons),1 on impact. By contrast, the most powerful man-made explosive device ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba or Emperor Bomb, had a Yield of only 50 Megaton s, which would make this impact 2,000,000 times more powerful. The impact would have caused some of the largest Megatsunami s in Earth's history. These would have spread in all directions, hitting the Caribbean island of Cuba especially hard. A cloud of dust, ash and steam would spread itself from the crater. The pieces of the meteorite would have rained all over Earth, igniting global wildfires. The Shock Wave s would have continued hundreds of kilometers into the planet, causing global Earthquakes and Volcanic Eruption s. The emission of dust and particles covered the entire surface of the earth for several years, possibly a decade, creating a harsh environment. (Pope, ''et al.'', 1997) EXTINCTION OF THE DINOSAURS This timing is in good agreement with the theory postulated by the late Physicist Luis Alvarez and his son, Geologist Walter Alvarez , for the extinction of the Dinosaur s. The Alvarezes, at the time both faculty members at the University Of California, Berkeley , 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, though not universally, accepted by the Scientific Community . The Chicxlub debate , Princeton University website |
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