The underwater crater, spotted serendipitously in commercial observations of seafloor sediments, is believed to have formed at roughly the same time as the famous Cretaceous-Paleogene impact event.
Chicxulub Crater
Posted inScience Updates
A Post-Impact Deep Freeze for Dinosaurs
New research supports the hypothesis that dinosaurs were done in by climate change after an asteroid impact kicked up a massive plume of sulfur gases that circled the globe for several decades.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Shining a Spotlight on the Chicxulub Impact Crater
A new seismic survey of the Chicxulub impact crater reveals the structure of its peak ring and the sediments that cover it.
Posted inNews
El impacto de Chicxulub cambió para siempre la biodiversidad de la selva tropical
Hace sesenta y seis millones de años, un asteroide reinició la mayor parte de la vida en la Tierra. Pero sin este evento catastrófico, la composición de las selvas tropicales neotropicales no sería la misma.
Posted inNews
Vestiges of a Volcanic Arc Hidden Within Chicxulub Crater
Scientists discovered magmatic remnants of a volcanic arc by dating granitic rocks of the middle crust excavated by, and hidden within, the Chicxulub impact crater.
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Chicxulub Impact Changed Tropical Rain Forest Biodiversity Forever
Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid reset most of life on Earth. But without this catastrophic event, the composition of neotropical rain forests wouldn’t be the same.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Life in the Chicxulub Crater Years After It Was Formed
While the seas were still churning from the impact and the seawater temperatures were high due to the hydrothermal activity, life was reestablishing itself inside the crater.
Posted inNews
Asteroid Impact, Not Volcanism, Likely Spelled Dinosaurs’ End
Using climate and habitat modeling, researchers show that solar dimming caused by an asteroid impact would have plunged the world into an “impact winter” and decimated dinosaur habitats.
Posted inNews
Chicxulub Impact Crater Hosted a Long-Lived Hydrothermal System
Chemical and mineralogical evidence of fluid flow—potentially conducive to microscopic life—was revealed in rock cores extracted from the crater’s “peak ring.”
Posted inNews
Huge Global Tsunami Followed Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Impact
The cataclysmic Chicxulub impact roughly 66 million years ago spawned a tsunami that produced wave heights of several meters in distant waters, new simulations suggest.