Large Deep-Ocean Impacts, Sea-Floor Hiatuses, and Apparent Short Term Sea-Level Changes

Widespread discontinuities and unconformities in deep-sea sedimentary records (hiatuses) often correspond to rapid fluctuations in eustatic sea level. Such global paleoceanographic events have been attributed to vertical tectonic movements, to changes in ocean basin configuration and volume, and to glacial versus non-glacial climates. Alternatively, megatsunami waves generated by large deep-ocean impacts cause widespread erosion of the sea floor centered on the impact site. At the shoreline, run-up heights can exceed 1 km on a global scale. These high-energy events might be the source of some sea-floor hiatuses as well as stratigraphic intervals currently interpreted as short-term regression and transgression (r-t) pulses in sea level. A widespread hiatus, probable impact ejecta, ocean chemistry and sediment changes, and r-t pulse occurring at ~68-67 Ma indicate that a large oceanic impact might have preceded the Chicxulub impact by a few million years. The hiatus proximal to the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary is most pronounced in the northern Pacific basin and, because tsunami amplitude is proportional to water depth, could not have been caused by the shallow-water (<=100 m) Chicxulub impact at ~65 Ma. Thus K-T time likely experienced two large bolide impacts, one of which occurred in the deep ocean.