DEFINITION OF CHICXULUB, YUCATÁN, MEXICO

A small town on the northwest

side of the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, at the center of a

110-mile (177-km) wide meteorite impact crater. Chicxulub is

located on the coast, and the impact crater is circular, half on

land and half under the shallow sea offshore. A series of concentric

rings defined by gravity—and, to a lesser extent, by

paleotopography buried under a little over half a mile (1 km)

of younger sediments—defines the crater. Much of the underlying

rock is limestone that has developed a series of caves

(cenotes in local terminology) that follow specific stratigraphic

units, also outlining parts of the crater. The Chicxulub crater

has been estimated to be 65 million years old, so its age coincides

with the mass extinction event associated with the death

of the dinosaurs at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary. Many

models suggest that the impact triggered giant tsunami as high

as one thousand feet, and formed a fireball a thousand miles

wide that erupted into the upper atmosphere. Huge earthquakes

accompanied the explosion. An ensuing global firestorm

released huge amounts of dust and carbon into the

atmosphere, blocking the Sun for years. The dust blown into

the atmosphere immediately initiated a dark global winter, and

as the dust settled months or years later, the extra carbon dioxide

in the atmosphere warmed the Earth for many years, forming

a greenhouse condition. Many forms of life, including the

dinosaurs, could not tolerate these rapid changes and perished.

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