The impact that killed the dinosaurs may have caused a “massive earthquake” that lasted from weeks to months

Artwork depicting a dinosaur’s experience of the Chicxulub effect. Credit: Hermann Bermudez

About 66 million years ago, an asteroid 10 km long struck the Earth, which led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. New evidence suggests that the Chicxulub collision also caused an earthquake so massive that it shook the planet for weeks to months after the impact. The amount of energy released in this “mega earthquake” is estimated at 1023 Joules, about 50,000 times more than the energy released in the 9.1-magnitude Sumatra earthquake in 2004.

Hermann Bermudez will present evidence of this “mega quake” at the upcoming GSA Connects meeting in Denver on Sunday, October 9. and Alabama and Mississippi to collect data, complementing his previous work in Colombia and Mexico to document evidence of catastrophic impact.

In 2014, while doing field work on Gorgonilla Island, Colombia, Bermúdez found spheroidal deposits – layers of sediment filled with tiny glass beads (1.1 mm in size) and fragments known as ‘tektites’ and ‘microtectites’ that were ejected into the atmosphere during an asteroid impact. . These glass grains formed when the heat and pressure of the impact melted and dispersed the Earth’s crust, ejecting tiny dots of molten into the atmosphere, then falling back to the surface as glass under the influence of gravity.

Spherical deposits on Gorgonella Island. Credit: Hermann Bermudez

The exposed rocks on the coast of Gorgonella Island tell a story from the ocean floor – at a depth of almost two kilometers. There, about 3,000 kilometers southwest of the impact site, sand, mud and small ocean creatures accumulated on the ocean floor when the asteroid impacted. Layers of clay and sandstone 10-15 meters below the sea floor have undergone the soft sediment deformation that is preserved in today’s outcrops, which Bermúdez attributes to vibration from the impact.

The faults and distortion caused by the vibration persist through the ball-rich layer that was deposited after the impact, indicating that the shaking must have continued for the weeks and months that it took for these fine sediments to reach the ocean floor. Just above those globular deposits, preserved fern spores indicate the first recovery of plant life after the impact.

Bermúdez explains, “The section that I discovered on Gorgonilla Island is a great place to study the K-Pg boundary, because it’s one of the best preserved and it was located deep in the ocean, so it wasn’t affected by the tsunami.”

A distorted, ball-rich layer on Gorgonilla Island (Colombia) shows that seismic activity continued for weeks or months after the impact. Credit: Hermann Bermudez

Evidence of deformation from the massive earthquake has also been preserved in Mexico and the United States. When El Papalote in Mexico was exposed, Bermúdez observed evidence of liquefaction—when strong vibration causes water-saturated sediment to flow like a liquid. In Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas, Bermudez has documented faults and fissures likely related to the massive earthquake. He also documented tsunami deposits in several outcrops, left by a massive wave that was part of the successive disasters caused by the asteroid impact.

Bermúdez will deliver a lecture on the evidence for the massive earthquake at the GSA Connects meeting in Denver on Sunday, October 9. He will also submit a poster about his observations of tsunami deposits and earthquake-related deformation on Monday, October 10, which will be available in English, Spanish, Italian, French and Chinese. When discussing his research, he emphasized the important role the collaboration played in visiting and studying the many outcrops that tell the story of this extreme event in Earth’s history.

A dinosaur-killing asteroid triggered a global tsunami that roamed the sea floor thousands of miles from the impact site More information: (Summary) The Chicxulub megaquake: Evidence from Colombia, Mexico, and the United States provided by the Geological Society of America

Quote: Impact that killed the dinosaurs may have caused a ‘mega earthquake’ that lasted weeks to months (2022, Oct 6) Retrieved Oct 6, 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-10-impact- dinosaurs- caused a huge earthquake-week.html

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