About66 million years earlier, a huge asteroid crashed into Earth near the website of the town of Chicxulub in what is now Mexico. This effect accompanies the limit in between the Cretaceous and Paleogene durations and is the possible trigger for the last mass termination in Earth’s history. The magnitude of the effect launched energy equivalent to 1023 joules, enough to create massive earthquakes, mega-tsunamis, and form a crater of 180-200 km (112-124 miles) in size in the Yucatan Peninsula. New research study recommends that the Chicxulub effect likewise set off a mega-earthquake so enormous that it shook the world for weeks to months after the accident.
Artwork portraying one dinosaur’s experience of the Chicxulub effect. Image credit: Hermann Bermúdez.
In 2014, Montclair State University scientist Hermann Bermúdez and associates discovered the so-called spherule deposits on Colombia’s Gorgonilla Island.
The deposits were filled with little glass beads (as big as 1.1 mm) and fragments referred to as ‘tektites’ and ‘microtektites’ that were ejected into the environment throughout an asteroid effect.
These glass beads formed when the heat and pressure of the effect melted and spread the crust of the Earth, ejecting little, melted blobs up into the environment, to then fall back to the surface area as glass under the impact of gravity.
The rocks exposed on the coast of Gorgonilla Island narrate from the bottom of the ocean– approximately 2 km (1.2 miles) down.
There, about 3,000 km (1,864 miles) southwest from the website of the effect, sand, mud, and little ocean animals were building up on the ocean flooring when the asteroid hit.
Layers of mud and sandstone as far as 10-15 m (33-49 feet) listed below the sea flooring experienced soft-sediment contortion that is maintained in the outcrops today, which the authors credit to the shaking from the effect.
Faults and contortion due to shaking con