A 6-mile (10-kilometer) asteroid hit Earth 66 million years ago, triggering the extinction of the dinosaurs. According to new evidence, the Chicxulub impact also triggered an earthquake that was so massive it shook the planet for weeks to months after the collision. This 'mega-earthquake' released a
New evidence suggests that the Chicxulub asteroid impact triggered an earthquake so monstrous that it shook the planet for weeks to months after the collision.
Evidence of this “mega-earthquake” will be presented at the upcoming GSA Connects meeting in Denver this Sunday, October 9, by Hermann Bermúdez, a PhD student in the Environmental Science and Management program at Montclair State University. Earlier this year, with support from a GSA Graduate Student Research Grant, Bermúdez visited outcrops of the infamous-Paleogene mass extinction event boundary in Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi to collect data.
While doing fieldwork on Colombia’s Gorgonilla Island in 2014, Bermúdez found spherule deposits. These are layers of sediment filled with small glass beads and shards known as ‘tektites’ and ‘microtektites’ that were ejected into the atmosphere during an asteroid impact.
The rocks exposed on the coast of Gorgonilla Island tell a story from the bottom of the ocean—roughly 1.2 miles down. There, about 2,000 miles southwest from the site of the impact, sand, mud, and small ocean creatures were accumulating on the ocean floor when the asteroid hit. Layers of mud and sandstone as far as 35-50 feet below the sea floor experienced soft-sediment deformation that is preserved in the outcrops today, which Bermúdez attributes to the shaking from the impact.
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