Terrawatch: Asteroid that burnt up dinosaurs caused international mega-tsunami | Asteroids


Any dinosaur that survived the Chicxulub asteroid affect 66m years in the past then confronted a mega-tsunami that washed round all the international and started as a mile-high wave, a learn about displays.

It isn’t a surprise {that a} 14km-wide asteroid slamming into the Gulf of Mexico would generate one hell of a tsunami however that is the primary time somebody has labored out how giant and the way far-reaching it will were.

The use of crater affect and international tsunami fashions, researchers display that inside of 10 mins of affect a 1.5km-high wall of water used to be racing out of the Gulf of Mexico. Inside 24 hours the shores of New Zealand – greater than 10,000km away – had been engulfed by means of towering 10-metre excessive waves and inside of 48 hours few coastlines remained untouched.

Their effects, printed in AGU Advances, are corroborated by means of the jumble of rocks washed up by means of the tsunami in far-flung places. A 66m-year-old rock mashup alongside the japanese shores of New Zealand had initially been attributed to earthquake process however is now considered tsunami particles.

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The researchers estimate the tsunami used to be about 30,000 instances extra vigorous than the Indian Ocean tsunami on 26 December 2004. β€œAny traditionally documented tsunamis faded compared to such international affect,” they write.

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