A study shows that any dinosaur that survived the asteroid impact 66 million years ago faced a mega-tsunami that started as a mile high wave.
This is the first time anyone has figured out how big the asteroid would be and how far away it would go.
Within 10 minutes of impact a 1.5 km high wall of water was racing out of the Gulf of Mexico. Within 24 hours the shores of New Zealand were engulfed by 10-metre high waves and few coastlines remained unaffected.
Their results, published in AGU Advances, are supported by the large amount of rocks washed up in far- flung locations. The 66m-old rock mashup along the eastern shores of New Zealand was originally thought to be caused by an earthquake, but now it is thought to be debris from the waves that hit the country.
Go to down to earth.
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According to the researchers, the Indian Ocean tsunami was 30,000 times more energetic than the tsunami in the sea. They write that any historically documented tsunamis pale in comparison.
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