Chicxulub Crater Seismic Survey Prepares Way for Future Drilling

Sixty-five million years ago, a large meteorite hit the Earth and formed the ~200-km-wide Chicxulub crater in Yucatán, Mexico. The well-known, massive extinction event at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary appears to have been caused, at least in part, by this impact. In the first few seconds after impact the surface of the Earth was pushed down to form a cavity ~35 km deep, and in the next few hundred seconds this cavity collapsed to form a multi-ring basin with an inner peak ring. To examine the rings and subsurface structure of this superbly preserved impact crater, a seismic experiment was shot across the crater in January and February 2005 by a team of scientists from Mexico, the United States, and the United Kingdom (Figure 1).