More than one asteroid could have spelled doom for the dinosaurs

It's possible that more than one asteroid hit Earth during the time when dinosaurs went extinct.

Evidence of an asteroid impact crater beneath the North Atlantic Ocean could cause researchers to rethink how the dinosaurs ended their reign.

The crater is thought to have been caused by an asteroid colliding with Earth around 66 million years ago, around the same time as the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The crater is more than 5 miles in diameter and was discovered using seismology.

Veronica Bray is a research scientist at the University of Arizona who specializes in craters in the solar system.

The crater is up to 1,300 feet below the ocean floor and is named after a seamount. The team thinks the asteroid could have formed from a parent asteroid or a swarm of asteroids. There are less than 20 confirmed marine impact craters on the planet.

The asteroid would have had an impact.

Bray used simulations to figure out what kind of collision happened. According to the simulations, the crater was caused by the collision of a 1,300 foot wide asteroid in the water.

Bray said that the earthquake would have generated a wave over 3000 feet high. Although it is a lot smaller than the global impact, Nadir will have a significant impact on the local area. It opens the question of whether there are otherblings to Chicxulub.

The size of the asteroid is similar to that of asteroid Bennu, the target of the OSIRIS-REx mission.

Bray said that the simulations give important new insights into the ocean depths at the time of impact.

What is the shape of the crater?

The geological process that caused the African and American continents to drift apart, which opened the Atlantic Ocean, was the reason why Uisdean Nicholson discovered the crater.

I've read a lot of data, but have never seen anything like this. Nicholson said that he found an 8.5 kilometer depression under the sea that was very unusual. There are features that point to the impact of a meteorite. It has a raised rim and is very similar to impact craters.

There are chaotic deposits outside of the crater and what appears to be ejected from the crater. The characteristics are not in line with other crater forming processes.

Around the same time, the asteroid crashed.

Sean Gulick, an impact expert at the University of Texas Austin, is one of the study's authors. It's existence requires us to investigate the possibility of an impact cluster in the latest era.

There is some uncertainty about the precise time of impact due to the lack of resolution of the data

Only 200 impactors have been found despite 4 billion years of hitting Earth. Whenever a new potential impact is discovered, it's exciting news.

To confirm that it's an asteroid impact crater, Nicholson is applying for funding to drill into the sea.

More information: Uisdean Nicholson et al, The Nadir Crater offshore West Africa: A candidate Cretaceous-Paleogene impact structure, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn3096 Journal information: Science Advances