Vestiges of a Volcanic Arc Hidden Within Chicxulub Crater

By Alka Tripathy-Lang

June 15, 2021

About 66 million years ago, an asteroid hurtled through Earth’s atmosphere at approximately 20 kilometers per second—nearly 100 times the speed of sound—and slammed into water and limestone off Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, catalyzing the demise of the dinosaurs. The solid rock hit by the asteroid momentarily behaved like a liquid, said University of Texas at Austin geophysicist Sean Gulick. Almost instantaneously, a massive transient crater extended to the mantle, and rocks from 10 kilometers deep rushed to the sides of the hole. They slid back toward the crater’s center and shot 20 kilometers into the air before collapsing outward again. As the rock flowed outward, it regained its strength and formed a peak ring, resulting in mountains encircling the center of the 200-kilometer-wide Chicxulub crater.

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