Researchers say they have found marks left behind as tsunami bring out by the infamous dinosaur - killing asteroid reached shallow waters off North America 66 million years ago . If they ’re right , these are the prominent such formations on Earth .
Dr Gary Kinslandof the University of Louisiana at Lafayette was involve in two seemingly unrelated labor when an unexpected joining was reveal . He was study the Chixculub crater that marked the end of the Cretaceous Era . Meanwhile , he was also attribute postgraduate students to represent the mien of coalbed methane in northern Louisiana using ground - penetrate radar that reflects off changes in subsurface composition .
One graduate student , Kaare Egegahl , brought Kinsland a stratal image showing ripple marks at a geological “ horizon ” where a pronounced change in strong-arm characteristics pass .
“ I fuck that his paradigm was near the [ Cretaceous / Paleogene]K / Pg , knew the direction from the 3D to Chicxulub , put 2 and 2 together , and exclaimed … OMG , ” Kinsland said in astatement .
year after , after further investigation , those ripples are the subject of a paper inEarth and Planetary Science Letters . They look like those left behind by average waves on sandy beach – but are 16 m ( 53 base ) high-pitched and 600 ( 0.4 miles ) meters apart .
From celebrate what pass when you throw a stone into a pond , it ’s clean-cut that a miles - wide mass doss down into the Atlantic Ocean will make waves . It ’s to be expected the enormous tsunami released by an impact as powerful as at Chicxulub would scour distant coastlines , leaving highly seeable Mark , especially on soft ground .
Finding those imprint so many year later is more surprising , but these researchers think the rippling were preserved because they were made not on land , but in what was then just the correct depth of water .
“ These megaripples are preserved as a solution of having spring below storm wafture base and being buried by Paleocene cryptical body of water shales , ” theywrite . The contours on what was once the sea bottom have been buried in almost a mile of sediment and stain since then . Nevertheless , their cause can be discover not only from the horizon ’s timing , but their commission – pointing straight towards Chicxulub .
Calculating the deepness of water at the time – around 60 meters ( 197 feet ) – and the ripple size , the authors depend the waves creditworthy could have been up to a mile high , matchingprevious estimate .
Not everyone is convinced . SciencenewsquotesDr Pedro J.M. Costa , a sedimentologist at the Universidade de Coimbra , Portugal , saying ; “ It ’s hard to see how such a eminent - energy issue could form ripple marks because they are usually assort with much calmer environments . ”
Dr Costa does not have an alternative account for the shapes found in the recent composition , however , saying that “ Maybe [ the Chicxulub impact was ] such a high - order of magnitude result that what we see in normal tsunami events do n’t apply to this one . ”
The finding comes two years after the announcement of fossils of creatures that come out to have been killed theday of the impactby waves form in North America ’s inland ocean by seismic waves sire by the impact .
