- Jonathan Amos
- BBC science reporter
image source, Getty Images
When an asteroid hit what is now the Gulf of Mexico 66 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs, did it have a partner?
Was Earth bombed on that terrible day by more than one space rock?
Discover what appears to be a file second hole The impact on the other side of the Atlantic, in a very similar era, raises these questions.
It’s not as big as the ones we know ChicxulubAnd the Mexicobut she still talks about a catastrophic event.
This crater, called Nader, is located more than 300 meters below the sea floor 400 km from the coast of Guineain West Africa.
With a diameter of 8.5 kilometers, the asteroid that caused it is likely to have a diameter of just under half a kilometer.
The Chicxulub (Ch), Nadir (Nd) and Boltysh (Bo) craters are about 66 million years old.
Hidden depression identified by Osden Nicholsona researcher at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland.
He was analyzing data from seismic surveys, looking for a place to drill, to better understand past climate changes on Earth.
Such surveys, which oil and gas prospectors often obtain, record the various layers of underground rocks and sediments, often several kilometers deep.
“These surveys are like ultrasounds of the Earth,” Nicholson told the BBC. “I’ve probably spent the past 20 years interpreting them, but I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“Nadir form is The Diagnosing the impact of the asteroid. It has a raised rim surrounding a raised central area and then layers of debris extending outward.”
The diameter of the asteroid that created the Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico is estimated to be about 12 kilometers in diameter. It opened a 200-kilometer-wide depression, unleashing powerful earthquakes, tsunamis and a global firestorm in the process.
The impact threw so much dusty material into the sky that the ground sank into a deep freeze. Dinosaurs could not stand the climatic shock.
In comparison, the impacts of an asteroid capable of making a crater of a rare size would be much smaller.
Veronica Bray from the University of Arizona explained, “Our simulations indicate that this crater was caused by the impact of a 400-meter-wide asteroid in 500-800 meters of water.”
“This could have caused a tsunami more than one kilometer high, as well as an earthquake of about 6.5 degrees. The energy released would be about 1,000 times greater than that of January 2022 and the tsunami in Tonga,” he said. .
Chicxulub Crater – An event that changed life on Earth
image source, Container
The outer edge (white arc) of the crater lies partially under the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula.
- A 12 km wide body dug a hole about 100 km wide and 30 km deep.
- Then this bowl collapsed, leaving a crater 200 kilometers wide and a few kilometers deep.
- Today, much of the crater is buried in the sea, under 600 meters of sediment.
- On the ground, it is covered with limestone, but its edge is traced through cenotes.
- Scientists recently dug into the crater of the volcano to learn about its composition.
image source, Max Alexander / B612 / Asteroid Day
Mexico’s famous cenotes formed in the weak limestone lining the crater.
Nicholson’s team should be too Caution in linking the two effects.
Nader is given a very similar date to Chicxulub based on analysis of fossils known ages that were excavated in a nearby crater.
But to make a definitive statement, the rocks in the crater itself must be extracted and examined.
This will also confirm that Nader is indeed the structure of an asteroid impact and not some other unrelated feature caused by, for example, ancient volcanoes.
The idea that Earth may have been exposed to large space rocks in the past is not new.
It has been speculated that the asteroid that created the Bolch crater in Ukraine may also be connected to the Chicxulub event in some way. His age is not much different.
The rare-form asteroid may have fallen to Earth on the same day, said Sean Gulick, a researcher at the University of Texas who co-led the recent project to drill into the Chicxulub crater.
Or it could have hit the planet a million or two years after the Mexican disaster.
Scientists will only know for sure when the rocks from the West African crater will be examined in the laboratory.
“a cousin much smallerOr sister, it doesn’t necessarily add to what we know about the extinction of the dinosaurs, but it does add to our understanding of the astronomical event that was Chicxulub.”
“Was this the disintegration of a main body with multiple fragments colliding with the Earth over time? Was Chicxulub an asteroid with a smaller body orbiting a larger one?”
“These are interesting questions to pursue, because knowing that Chicxulub can have that extra thrill of a second hole at the same time changes the story quite a bit about how Chicxulub turns out.”
The discovery of a rare crater was published in the specialized journal science progress.
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