The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs also caused an earthquake

The asteroid that hit Earth and triggered the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs triggered an earthquake that shook the planet for weeks or even months, according to new research.

About 66 million years ago, a 6-mile-wide (10 kilometer) space rock now called the Chicxulub Impactor collided with Earth off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The asteroid impact and its aftermath triggered what became known as the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction event, killing three-quarters of Earth’s species and leaving its fingerprints scattered throughout the geological record. Now, new research indicates that the impact also caused a “massive earthquake” that released energy equivalent to 10^23 joules – about 50,000 times more energy than the 9.1-magnitude earthquake that struck Sumatra in 2004.

Hermann Bermudez, a geologist at Montclair State University in New Jersey, assessed the magnitude of the earthquake caused by the Chicxulub effect by visiting outcrops of the K-Pg mass extinction event located in Texas, Alabama and Mississippi.

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He also consolidated his previous research on the effects of asteroid collisions with Colombia and Mexico. On Colombia’s Gorgonilla Island, about 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) from the Chicxulub impact site, a geologist found layers of sediment that contain deposits of balls.

Globes are small glass beads no larger than a grain of sand (about 1 millimeter) that are formed when heat and pressure from a tremendous effect melts a substance from the earth’s crust and extrudes it into the atmosphere, where it cools into glass beads and then returns to the earth. In addition to the globules, Bermúdez found in the same deposits more tactics and shell-like microtectes, which also represent materials ejected into the atmosphere during an asteroid impact.

Balls and tacks along the coast of Gorgonella Island revealed what happened to the sea floor about 1.25 miles (2 km) underwater around the time the asteroid impacted. When the Chicxulub impactor hit the ground, layers of mud and sandstone as much as 33 to 50 feet (10 to 15 meters) below the ocean floor were distorted. Bermúdez believes that this deformation, preserved in the outcrops today, resulted from the impact.

The faults and deformations that are a geological imprint of this vibration persist into the glob-rich sediment layers. These layers must have been deposited after the impact, but because it would have taken time for these layers to build up, Bermudez hypothesizes that the shaking caused by the impact lasted for weeks or even months.

“The section that I discovered on Gorgonella Island is a great place to study the K-Pg boundary because it is one of the best preserved and was located in the depths of the ocean, so it was not affected by the tsunami waves,” Bermudez said in a statement. Statement (Opens in a new tab).

Bermúdez also found evidence of a massive earthquake caused by the Chicxulub effect in the geological record in Mexico, where he found a liquefaction fingerprint, where strong vibration caused water-saturated sediments to flow like a liquid.

At sites in Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas, Bermudez observed faults and fissures that are also likely related to the megaquake caused by the Chicxulub effect. Many of the bulges showed signs of deposits left by massive tsunamis, also caused by the massive asteroid impact on Earth.

Bermudez will present the research at the Geological Society of America Connections meeting in Denver on Sunday (October 9).

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