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News: Underwater caves off Yucatan yield three old skeletons—remains date to 11,000 B.C.
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The Chicxulub Crater Dig

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Derek
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« on: June 23, 2007, 03:39:21 am »

  The Chicxulub Crater Dig
By
Pasadena Bureau Chief
posted: 07:00 am ET
18 December 2000




SAN FRANCISCO Plans to drill deep into the Chicxulub crater in Mexico next summer will allow scientists to further characterize how an asteroid impact 65 million years ago killed 75 percent of all living species, including the dinosaurs.

An asteroid, perhaps as large as 9 miles (15 kilometers) across, slammed into the Earth to create the 120-mile (200-kilometer) diameter crater. The crater is well preserved, but lies buried under hundreds of feet (meters) of sediments where it straddles the coast of Mexicos Yucatan peninsula.

The violence of the impact extended deep into Earths crust.

"Even at 35 kilometers (22 miles), were seeing the effects of this impact," said Gail Christeson, of the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, who was part of a scientific panel that presented on Sunday the latest Chicxulub research results during the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.



This three-dimensional map of local gravity and magnetic field variations shows a multiringed structure called Chicxulub named after a village located near its center.

The ancient impact kicked up incredible amounts of dust into Earths atmosphere at the time, chilling global temperatures and precipitating what many suspect was a nuclear winter-type scenario.

The force of the impact sent some debris so high above the atmosphere, only to undergo the heating of reentry, that portions found in present-day Belize resemble meteorites, said Kevin Pope, of Geo Eco Arc Research.

The impacts effect was also global: The fossil record from the layers that immediately follow the event shows a near-total absence of life.

Bad air

Now, new evidence suggests that it was not only sunlight-blocking dust that prompted the global crisis, but atmospheric chemistry as well. For the high temperatures and pressures associated with the asteroid impact vaporized carbonate- and sulfate-rich rocks at the site, pumping vast amounts of carbon dioxide and sulfur into the atmosphere.

"It dumps most of its energy around the impact site itself, so you have to think of how it distributed its effect around the Earth," Virgil Sharpton, a University of Alaska geologist, said of the culprit asteroid. "Its more efficient death through chemistry."

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/chicxulub_crater_001219-1.html
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Derek
Superhero Member
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Posts: 2181



« Reply #1 on: June 23, 2007, 03:41:46 am »

 
  The Chicxulub Crater Dig
By
Pasadena Bureau Chief
posted: 07:00 am ET
18 December 2000


 


In the aftermath, sulfuric acid likely rained down on the planet. And increased levels of carbon dioxide might have sent temperatures soaring back upward in a violent swing, further distressing an Earth already wracked at the time by extreme volcanism.

A June drilling

Sharpton said the International Continental Drilling Program hopes to begin work in June, drilling deep into the inside rim of the ancient crater at a point about 40 miles (70 kilometers) from ground zero. A second project, the Ocean Drilling Program, will do more offshore drilling work on Chicxulub in 2003. In recent years, the National University of Mexico (UNAM) and Mexico’s state oil company (PEMEX) have done extensive drilling in the region.

The work may confirm earlier data that suggest the rocks at the impact site contain more carbonates and sulfates than previously believed, which would promote the notion of an atmospheric chemistry crisis of global proportions.

Drill cores should also reveal a fossil record that will show how life rebounded following the asteroid impact.

"We want to see how quickly life came back," Sharpton said.




The collision occurred on the Yucatan platform (see map) and is centered near the port city of Progreso, Mexico
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