A large impact crater under the North Atlantic Ocean reveals - the deadly asteroid was not alone
The discovery of a large impact crater under the North Atlantic reveals the possibility that more than one asteroid spelled the doom of the dinosaurs.
A new impact crater discovered under the ocean floor suggests that more than one asteroid may have hit Earth around the time the dinosaurs went extinct
Scientists have discovered evidence of an asteroid impact crater under the North Atlantic Ocean. It may force researchers to rethink how the dinosaurs came to the end of their reign.
The team believes that the crater was caused by an asteroid that crashed into Israel about 66 million years ago. That's roughly the time the Chickshulov asteroid hit Earth off the coast of present-day Yucatan and wiped out the dinosaurs.
The crater, which is more than eight kilometers in diameter, was discovered through seismic measurements, which allow scientists to explore what lies deep beneath the earth's surface.
Veronica Bray, a research scientist at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, is a co-author of a study in Science Advances detailing the discovery. She specializes in craters found throughout the solar system.
Nadir Crater, named after a nearby seamount, is buried up to 400 meters below the sea floor about 400 km off the coast of Guinea in West Africa. According to the research team, the asteroid that created the recently discovered Nadir Crater could have been formed by the breakup of a parent asteroid or by an asteroid swarm in the same time period. If confirmed, the crater would be one of less than twenty confirmed marine impact craters found in the world.
Bray used computer simulations to determine the type of collision that occurred and what the results were. The simulations show that the crater was created by the collision of an asteroid 400 meters wide with water at a depth of 500 to 800 meters.
"It created a tsunami that was over 900 meters high, and also an earthquake with a magnitude of over 6.5," Bray said. "Although it is much smaller than the global catastrophe from the impact of Chikshulov, Nadir would have contributed significantly to the local devastation. If we found one "brother" of Chikshulov, the question arises whether there are others."
The asteroid's estimated size is about the same as Bennu, the target of OSIRIS-REx, the University of Arizona-led NASA mission to return samples from asteroids. According to Bray's calculations, the energy released in the impact that caused the Nadir crater was around a thousand times greater than the tsunami that caused it. From the massive underwater eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Hapai volcano in the Polynesian nation of Tonga on January 15.
These are preliminary simulations and we will have to refine them when we get more data," Bray said, "but they provide important insights into the possible depth of the ocean in this area at the time of the impact."
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