The effect of killing the dinosaurs caused a “massive earthquake” that lasted from weeks to months

The Chicxulub impact event was a nearly 100 million megaton explosion that caused the last mass extinction in Earth’s history. Although several studies report catastrophic sedimentation associated with earthquakes associated with the Chicxulub impact, there is no detailed record of the impacts and timing of the impact on the definitive Maastricht sedimentary record.

According to a new study, the size of the impact releases energy equivalent to 1023 joules. It was high enough to generate giant earthquakes (magnitude 10+) and huge tsunamis and to form a crater with a diameter of 180-200 km in the Yucatan Peninsula. Therefore, the impact is thought to result in a massive earthquake that shook the planet for weeks to months after the impact.

Hermann Bermudez will present evidence of this “huge earthquake” at the upcoming GSA Connects meeting in Denver on Sunday, October 9. Earlier this year, with support from the GSA GSA Graduate Student Research Grant, Bermúdez visited the outcrops of the infamous Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event in Texas, Alabama and Mississippi to collect data, building on his previous work in Colombia and Mexico documenting evidence of the catastrophic impact.

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

On the island of Gorgonilla in Colombia, Bermudez discovered spherical deposits in 2014 while conducting fieldwork there. These deposits are layers of sediment containing small glass grains (1.1 mm in size), fragments known as tektites and “microtikites” that were ejected into the atmosphere during an asteroid impact. These glass grains were created when the heat and pressure of the collision melted and dispersed the Earth’s crust, ejecting small molten dots into the atmosphere, which later fell to the surface as glass due to gravity.

About two kilometers below the ocean’s surface, exposed rocks on the coast of Gorgonella Island tell a tale. When the asteroid impacted, sand, mud and small marine life about 3,000 kilometers southwest of the impact site accumulated on the ocean floor. Bermúdez credits the soft sediment deformation that has been preserved in the outcrops today in layers of clay and sandstone up to 10-15 meters below the sea floor to vibration from the impact.

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

Spherical deposits on Gorgonella Island. Credit: Hermann Bermudez.

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 tsunamis.”

Both Mexico and the United States have preserved evidence of massive deformation. Bermudez in Quake saw signs of liquefaction at the exposure of El Papalote in Mexico, which occurs when violent shaking forces water-saturated sediment to flow like a liquid. He recorded faults and fissures in Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas that may have been caused by the massive earthquake. In addition, he describes tsunami deposits left by a huge wave that was one of the components of successive disasters caused by the impact of the asteroid in many outcrops.

Bermúdez will discuss 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 crucial role the collaboration played in visiting and studying the many outcrops that tell the story of this extreme event in Earth’s history.

Journal reference:

Hermann Bermudez, Montclair State University. The Great Chicxulub Earthquake: Evidence from Colombia, Mexico, and the United States. American Geological Society Abstracts with Programs. Volume 54, Number 5, 2022. DOI: 10.1130/abs/2022AM-377578. Sunday, October 9, 2022, 3:45 PM – 4:00 PM

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