Asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs also triggered 'mega earthquake'

There was an earthquake that shook the planet for weeks or even months after the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.

It was 66 million years ago that a space rock slammed into the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The K-Pg mass extinction event was caused by the asteroid impact and left a trail of destruction throughout the geological record. New research shows that the impact triggered a mega earthquake that released 50,000 times more energy than the 9.1 earthquake that hit Sumatra in 2004.

The K-Pg mass extinction event outcrops located in Texas, Alabama and Mississippi were assessed by a geology professor at a New Jersey university.

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He had previously researched the effects of the asteroid impact in Mexico. There are deposits of spherules on Columbia's Gorgonilla Island which is 1,900 miles from the impact site.

Small glass beads no larger than a grain of sand are formed when heat and pressure from a massive impact melt material from Earth's crust is ejected into the atmosphere, where it cools to glass beads and then falls back Earth. In addition to the spherules, Bermdez found in the same sediments more shards like tektites and microtektites, which were ejected into the atmosphere during an asteroid impact.

Around the time of the asteroid impact, the spherule and tektites were found along the coast of the island. The mud and sandstone below the ocean floor were affected by the impactor. Bermdez thinks that the shaking was caused by the impact on the outcrop.

The geological signature of this shaking continues until the spherule-rich layers of silt. It would have taken time for these layers to accumulate after the impact, so Bermdez theorizes that the shaking lasted for weeks or even months.

One of the best-preserved parts of the K-Pg boundary is located deep in the ocean, so it was not affected by waves.

The signature of liquefaction was found by Bermdez in the geological record in Mexico, which was caused by a mega-earthquake triggered by the Chicxulub impact.

Bermdez found fault and cracks that were likely to be connected to the mega-earthquake caused by the Chicxulub impact. There were signs of deposits left by the huge waves of a tsunami triggered by the impact of the asteroid.

The research will be presented by Bermdez at the meeting.

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