Massive asteroid that eradicated dinosaurs when it crashed into Earth was not alone: Researchers

The massive asteroid that is believed to have ended the era of dinosaurs when it crashed into Earth some 66 million years ago was not the only culprit, researchers found recently.

After performing detailed scans of an underwater crater off the coast of Guinea in West Africa, researchers discovered that it was created when another large asteroid smashed into Earth around the same time at the end of the Cretaceous period.

The violent collision between 65 million and 67 million years ago produced a crater more than five miles across, the scans reveal. Scientists estimate that the asteroid measured a quarter of a mile wide struck Earth at nearly 45,000 miles per hour.

Add WION as a Preferred Source

Also Read |Earth has hosted mini-moons in the past, and one of them will revisit in 27 years

Though the other space rock was much smaller than the asteroid that caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs, it was large enough to leave scars on the face of the planet.

“The new images paint a picture of the catastrophic event,” said Dr Uisdean Nicholson, a marine geologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, who first discovered the Nadir crater in 2022. At the time, the details of the impact were unclear.

Impact of another massive collision

Scientists devised 3D seismic imaging to map the crater rim on the Earth to further understand about the impact of the second collision. The team also analysed the scars that lie 30 metres beneath the ocean floor.

“There are around 20 confirmed marine craters worldwide, and none of them has been captured in anything close to this level of detail,” said Nicholson. “It’s exquisite.”

Researchers found that the collision set off intense tremors that liquefied beneath the ocean floor causing faults to form below the seabed. This impact triggered landslides with visible traces thousands of square miles beyond the crater rim and also created a tsunami more than 800 metres high that would have travelled across the Atlantic.

Also Read |Earth has a hidden massive sixth ocean in a crystal structure under its crust. Here's why

The details of the research are published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment.

The team of researchers though cannot pinpoint the exact location where the asteroid struck the Earth, the discovery of the crater and its approximate age has itself prompted speculation that it may have belonged to a cluster of dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period.

“The closest humans have come to seeing something like this is the 1908 Tunguska event, when a 50-metre asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded in the skies above Siberia,” Nicholson said.

(With inputs from agencies)