Dinosaurs & Prehistory - Fossils & Earth history - Prehistoric natural disasters - Deep time - Coastal environments
You are standing on a coast 66 million years ago. Shortly after a bright flash in the sky, the sea suddenly retreats far from shore. What is probably about to happen?
Correct!
The Chicxulub asteroid impact triggered tremendous earthquakes and enormous waves. Before a tsunami reaches a coast, the water can initially recede an unusual distance. To animals on the shore, the suddenly exposed seabed might have looked like a harmless change, but it would actually have been the final warning of an approaching wall of water.
The asteroid left a crater about 180 kilometers wide beneath what is now Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. The consequences of the impact contributed to the extinction of roughly three quarters of the animal and plant species then alive, including every non-avian dinosaur.
Source: AGU Advances / NOAA
