Dinosaur-killing asteroid also triggered mega-earthquake, shows study

Dinosaur-killing asteroid also triggered mega-earthquake, shows study

This evidence of deformation from the mega-earthquake is also present in Mexico and the United States.

The extinction of dinosaurs was triggered when a 10-kilometre asteroid hit Earth around 66 million years ago, according to the Geological Society of America (GSA). Scientists have uncovered new evidence that the Chicxulub impact also triggered a “mega-earthquake that released about 100 billion trillion joules of energy, or about 50,000 times more energy than was released in the Sumatra earthquake in 2004, which measured a magnitude 9.1 on the Richter scale.

Evidence for this “mega-earthquake” was presented by GSA researcher Hermann Bermudez during the GSA Connects meeting in Denver on Sunday, October 9. Bermudez visited outcrops of the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event boundary in Texas, Alabama and Mississippi earlier this year to collect data to supplement his previous work documenting evidence of the impact in Colombia and Mexico.

In 2014, Bermudez found spherule deposits while doing fieldwork on Gorgonila Island in Columbia. Spherule deposits are sediment layers filled with small glass beads smaller than 1.1 mm and shards known as “tektites” and “microtektites.” These shards and glass beads were ejected into the atmosphere during an asteroid impact. They were formed when the heat and pressure from the impact melted and scattered the crust of the Earth.

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The spherules and tektites found on the coast of Gorgonilla island give clues about what happened on the seafloor roughly 2 kilometres underwater at the time of the impact. When the Chicxulub asteroid hit the Earth, layers of mud and sandstone up to 15 metres below the ocean floor were deformed. According to Bermudez’s research, this was preserved in the outcrops due to an earthquake caused by the impact.

The faults and deformation due to the shaking continue up through the spherule-filled layer that was deposited after the impact. This indicates that the shaking must have continued for weeks and months it took for these finer-grained deposits to reach the ocean floor. And above the spherule deposits, preserved fern spores signal the first recovery of plant life following the impact.

This evidence of deformation from the mega-earthquake is also present in Mexico and the United States. Bermudez documented faults and cracks likely associated with the megaquake in Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. He also documented tsunami deposits at several of these outcrops, left by an enormous wave that was caused by the impact.

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