 |
|
UAF geologist studies Chicxulub impact crater
January 19, 2007About 65 million years ago, a massive disruption led to worldwide extinction of dinosaurs. The impact of a giant asteroid created massive tsunamis and spewed forth a global cloud of carbon gases that altered Earth's atmosphere and blocked the light for weeks, possibly years. In recent years, that impact event has been linked to a 112-mile-wide crater, dubbed Chicxulub, on the coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
Since its discovery in the 1980s, the Chicxulub crater has left its own impact on sky-watchers and sci-fi fans worldwide, and impact events have been depicted in Hollywood films such as "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact," as well as countless artistic renditions.
Despite the spotlight on the theories surrounding the impact, Michael Whalen, associate professor of geology at University of Alaska Fairbanks, has managed to stay "out of the limelight, yet into the limestone" with his work sampling the core of the crater. Due to the efforts of Buck Sharpton, UAF Vice Chancellor for Research, Whalen became part of an international effort to correlate seismic data with information obtained from a drill hole that reaches more than 1.2 miles deep, through the impact layer and beyond.
Interestingly enough, unlike other more noticeable craters, the Chicxulub crater spent 55 million years in virtual obscurity, due to the fast infilling that masked its presence. Speedy recovery, which by geologists' standards amounts to about 10 million years, preserved the crater by mantling it with sediment, attracting geologists like Whalen, who studies the effects of extinction events on carbonate layers (also known as limestone) and the organisms that make up those layers.
On Jan. 20, Whalen will be traveling with a team to the Chicxulub site for a week to obtain more core samples in order to get a better understanding of how the crater filled in and how the earth itself recovered from the massive impact. He's also part of an ongoing collaboration that is trying to secure funding to drill two more holes in the crater, one off shore and one through the peak ring.
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Interestingly enough, unlike other more noticeable craters, the Chicxulub crater spent 55 million years in virtual obscurity, due to the fast infilling that masked its presence. Speedy recovery, which by geologists' standards amounts to about 10 million years, preserved the crater by mantling it with sediment, attracting geologists like Whalen, who studies the effects of extinction events on carbonate layers (also known as limestone) and the organisms that make up those layers.
On Jan. 20, Whalen will be traveling with a team to the Chicxulub site for a week to obtain more core samples in order to get a better understanding of how the crater filled in and how the earth itself recovered from the massive impact. He's also part of an ongoing collaboration that is trying to secure funding to drill two more holes in the crater, one off shore and one through the peak ring.
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Princeton geoscientist offers new evidence that meteorite did not wipe out dinosaurs
A Princeton University geoscientist who has stirred controversy with her studies challenging a popular theory that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs has compiled powerful new evidence asserting her position.
More Evidence Chicxulub Was Too Early
A new study of melted rock ejected far from the Yucatan's Chicxulub impact crater bolsters the idea that the famed impact was too early to have caused the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
More Chicxulub Impact Crater Current Events and Chicxulub Impact Crater News Articles
|
Meteorite Impact: The Danger from Space and South Africa's Mega-Impact by W.Uwe Reimold (Author), Roger L. Gibson (Author) The impact of large extraterrestrial bolides (asteroids and comets) with Earth is an everpresent danger that humanity has only recently begun to recognise. Of the 175 impact craters found thus far on Earth, three giants stand out – Chicxulub in Mexico, Sudbury in Canada, and the Vredefort Impact Structure in South Africa. Each of these impact events catastrophically altered the global environment and was strong enough to drastically change life on our planet. The Vredefort Structure is the oldest and largest of these three giants at about 300 km diameter it is nearly twice the size of the Chicxulub crater that was formed by an impact that wiped out approximately 75% of all known life on Earth 65 million years ago. In the more than 2000 million years since its formation, water, wind... | |
|
HILDEBRAND, ALAN RUSSELL (1955- ): An entry from Gale's World of Earth Science by Gale (Publisher) This digital document is an article from World of Earth Science, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses. The length of the article is 390 words. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser. A comprehensive guide to the concepts, theories, discoveries, pioneers, and issues relating to topics in earth science. Its encyclopedic approach offers entries that are written in easy to understand language. | |
|
Biospheric effects of the Chicxulub impact and their role in the Cretaceous/Tertiary mass extinction annual report, NASA contract NASW-96030 (SuDoc NAS 1.26:205210) by Kevin O. Pope (Author) | |
|
Chicxulub impact event computer animations and paper models (SuDoc I 19.76:97-442-A) by Tau Rho Alpha (Author) |
| © 2009 BrightSurf.com |