Episode 1980
Chicxulub crater
Thu, 2022-Oct-06 01:59 UTC
Length - 2:40
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Thursday, 6 October 2022 is Chicxulub crater.
The Chicxulub crater (IPA: [tʃikʃuˈlub]) is an impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Its center is offshore near the communities of Chicxulub Puerto and Chicxulub Pueblo, after which the crater is named. It was formed slightly over 66 million years ago when a large asteroid, about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in diameter, struck Earth. The crater is estimated to be 180 kilometers (110 miles) in diameter and 20 kilometers (12 miles) in depth. It is the second largest confirmed impact structure on Earth, and the only one whose peak ring is intact and directly accessible for scientific research.
The crater was discovered by Antonio Camargo and Glen Penfield, geophysicists, who had been looking for petroleum in the Yucatán Peninsula during the late 1970s. Penfield was initially unable to obtain evidence that the geological feature was a crater and gave up his search. Later, through contact with Alan R. Hildebrand in 1990, Penfield obtained samples that suggested it was an impact feature. Evidence for the impact origin of the crater includes shocked quartz, a gravity anomaly, and tektites in surrounding areas.
The date of the impact coincides with the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (commonly known as the K–Pg or K–T boundary) and it is now widely accepted that the devastation and climate disruption from the impact was the cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, a mass extinction in which 75% of plant and animal species on Earth became extinct, including all non-avian dinosaurs.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:59 UTC on Thursday, 6 October 2022.
For the full current version of the article, see Chicxulub crater on Wikipedia.
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