Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN)– 66 million years ago, an asteroid collided with Earth, leaving a huge volcanic crater under the sea.
But wait… it’s not that asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
But this crater appeared around the same time, and was discovered off the coast of West Africa, 248 miles away.
Further study of the Nader crater, as it has been called, may shake what we know about that cataclysmic moment in natural history.
Osden Nicholson, an assistant professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, found the crater by accident.
While he was reviewing seismic survey data for another project on the tectonic split between South America and Africa, he found evidence of a crater 400 meters below seafloor sediments.
“While interpreting the data, I fell upon this unusual crater-like landmark, which is unlike anything I’ve seen before,” he said.
“It has all the characteristics of a crater,” he said.
In order to ensure that the crater was created by an asteroid impact, Nicholson explained that it was necessary to test the minerals in the crater floor.
The journal Science Advances published the study, Thursday.
“Discovering a crater on Earth is always important, because it is so rare in the geological record,” said Mark Boslog, a research professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of New Mexico. “There are less than 200 confirmed structural collisions with Earth, and very few potential candidate structures. It hasn’t been verified yet.”
He states that Boslog was not involved in this research, but agreed that the crater may have been caused by an asteroid impact.
He explained: “The opportunity to study a crater of this size underwater will help us understand the process of ocean impacts, the most common, but the least well-preserved and understood.”
consecutive results
The crater is 8 km wide, and Nicholson believes that it was most likely caused by the collision of an asteroid more than 400 meters wide, which thrust into the Earth’s crust.
While it is much smaller than the asteroid that caused the Chicxulub crater, it is still a large space rock.
It is reported that the Chicxulub crater is 100 miles wide, and was caused by an asteroid collision off the coast of Mexico, which led to the extinction of much life on this planet.
“A rare effect could have disastrous consequences locally and regionally, at least across the Atlantic,” Nicholson told CNN.
He continued, “Maybe there was a major earthquake (magnitude 6.5 – 7), and the ground shook locally. The air blast was heard all over the world, and it caused significant local damage across the region.”
It could have caused an “exceptionally large” tsunami at 3,200 feet around the crater.
Information from microfossils in nearby exploration wells shows that the crater formed approximately 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period.
However, there is still uncertainty about her exact age.
Nicholson said the asteroid impact could be related to the Chicxulub effect, or it could be just a coincidence, as an asteroid of this size would hit Earth every 700,000 years.
It is considered that knowing the exact age is crucial.
“Understanding the exact nature of the relationship with Chicxulub, if any, is important to understanding what was happening in the inner solar system at that time, and raises some interesting new questions,” he said.
Nicholson added: “If there are two collisions at the same time, are there other craters from them on the planet, and what is the sequential effect of multiple collisions?”