Another possible impact crater discovered on the coast of West Africa adds a new twist to the infamous extinction event
For clues, Nicholson examined the features beneath the seafloor between the two continents, collaborating with the commercial companies WesternGico and TGS for seismic data. The analysis tracked how seismic waves ricocheted underground to illuminate subterranean features. Almost immediately, Nicholson spotted something odd.
Nicholson reached out to other scientists, including Bray, to ask if they thought this could be an impact crater, and they all agreed: The feature consists of a depression surrounded by a rim with a prominent peak at its center, which is common among such craters. The collision would have unleashed the energy of 5,000 megatons of TNT, the team estimates, almost instantly vaporizing the water and layers of the seafloor below. Then a shockwave would have raced across the surface, causing once solid rock to flow like liquid. Within minutes, the seabed would have rebounded upward in a central peak and then collapsed back on itself.
But what the discovery means for our understanding of the events immediately following the Chicxulub impact and the end of the dinosaurs' reign remains uncertain. The energy released by the Nadir impact and its environmental consequences would have been dwarfed by the six-mile-wide Chicxulub asteroid’s collision with Earth and the global cataclysm that followed.
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