Sunday, October 23, 2022

New crater for an old event?

 

Came across this interesting paper in my informational forays on the Web.  I'll provide the abstract and the link to the paper so you, gentle reader, can decide if you find it interesting, too.


The Nadir Crater offshore West Africa: A candidate Cretaceous-Paleogene impact structure

"Evidence of marine target impacts, binary impact craters, or impact clusters are rare on Earth. Seismic reflection data from the Guinea Plateau, West Africa, reveal a ≥8.5-km-wide structure buried below ~300 to 400 m of Paleogene sediment with characteristics consistent with a complex impact crater. These include an elevated rim above a terraced crater floor, a pronounced central uplift, and extensive subsurface deformation. Numerical simulations of crater formation indicate a marine target (~800-m water depth) impact of a ≥400-m asteroid, resulting in a train of large tsunami waves and the potential release of substantial quantities of greenhouse gases from shallow buried black shale deposits. Our stratigraphic framework suggests that the crater formed at or near the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary (~66 million years ago), approximately the same age as the Chicxulub impact crater. We hypothesize that this formed as part of a closely timed impact cluster or by breakup of a common parent asteroid."

So the Chicxulub impact crater asteroid may have had a companion planet smasher.   I find that quite interesting. 

Also, this schematic diagram shows how the structure that was discovered may have formed.



No comments: