west africa impact crater

Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Impact craters are geologic structures formed when a large meteoroid, asteroid or comet smashes into a planet or a satellite. Funding acquisition: U.N. Project administration: U.N. Seismic waves from the impact would be equivalent to those generated by a magnitude ~7 Mw earthquake (46). 1B), which evidently formed during discrete marine transgressive-regressive events during the Late Cretaceous. We consider this to be the most likely water depth for the impact, based on crater morphology. Purported impact craters sometimes turn out to be geologic illusions. The largest confirmed impact events have had globally catastrophic consequences, with the 66million-year-old (Ma) Chicxulub event causing one of the most important extinction events in Earth history, at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary (3, 4). These collided with Jupiter over a period of about 6 days (14 Jovian days), with impact sites dispersed widely across the surface of the planet. Parameters for the Upper Cretaceous sedimentary sequence were based on data from ODP Leg 207 on the conjugate margin (reference). About two billion years ago, an asteroid measuring at least 10 kilometers across hurtled toward Earth. These observations are all consistent with a complex crater with an impact origin. Alterations in the strength model used to better approximate the marl and shale target might produce different amounts of uplift. Below the Albian surface, seismic reflections also show deflection down to the Jurassic (Fig. The hidden impact site was found more than 984-feet below the seabed, roughly 248 miles off the coast of Guinea in west Africa. Ch, Chicxulub Crater; Nd, Nadir Crater; Bo, Boltysh Crater. Projectile properties are within the range expected for terrestrial meteors [(66) and references therein] and were chosen to create a 7- to 9-km-diameter crater based on scaling trends (67). By University of Arizona August 18, 2022 Discovery of a large impact crater beneath the North Atlantic Ocean reveals that more than one asteroid could have spelled doom for the dinosaurs. The .gov means its official. The researchers also wanted to know if it was the breakup of a parent body that had multiple fragments that hit Earth over time. 2). Environmental issues of Lake Bosomtwe impact crater in Ghana West The EID lists fewer than ten such craters, and the largest in the last 100,000 years (100 ka) is the 4.5 km (2.8 mi) Rio Cuarto crater in Argentina. Its age is not too dissimilar. The arrival of such an object moving at roughly 20 kilometers per second would have produced tsunami waves more than a kilometer in height and ground shaking equivalent to that of a magnitude 7 earthquake, Bray estimated. Massive Impact Crater Beneath the North Atlantic Reveals Dinosaur Nicholson U., Libby S., Tappin D. R., McCarthy D., The Subantarctic Front as a sedimentary conveyor belt for tsunamigenic submarine landslides, Asteroid impact tsunami: A probabilistic hazard assessment, Air-sea waves from the explosion of Krakatoa, Quantifying the release of climate-active gases by large meteorite impacts with a case study of Chicxulub, Global K-Pg layer deposited from a dust cloud. In some of these cases, an elevated crater rim cannot be clearly identified, and the outer brim is considered to be part of the crater itself. Hazardous impactors of ~50 m in diameter, equivalent to the Tunguska event in 1908 (1), collide with Earth every ~900 years, and those larger than 1 km, with potential catastrophic regional or global consequences, every ~1 million years (2). These include a set of prominent seismic reflections (KU1KU4) that are interpreted as major flooding surfaces (Fig. 1). The collapse of this jet would result in the formation of secondary collapse tsunami (8), propagating out from the crater again, with this process of collapse and resurge occurring several times. Any animals on the shoreline nearby would see another sun, said Veronica Bray, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona and an author of the study. PMID 35977017. Of the preliminary simulations completed so far, it is likely that the material weakening of the central target is too high as the amount of uplift is larger than that shown in the seismic line across the crater. It is covered in limestone on land, but sinkholes trace its rim. Do not reproduce without permission. Hydrocodes solve the equations for conservation of mass, momentum, and energy, along with constitutive relations to describe the response of different materials to impact. Perhaps Chicxulub and the newly discovered featuredubbed Nadir craterformed from the breakup of a parent asteroid or as part of an impact cluster, the team suggested. A. The window to the world of. This list includes all 60 confirmed impact craters in North America in the Earth Impact Database (EID). An expanded set of high-amplitude reflections at the Top Maastrichtian horizon in deep water areas (Fig. Nadir Crater in West Africa Suggests a Second Impact After the This contact/compression stage is followed by the formation of the central uplift and collapsed transient crater rims during the crater modification stage, resulting in the structural configuration observed including the final elevated crater rims and faulted terraces surrounding a central uplift. Received 2021 Nov 17; Accepted 2022 Jun 30. Miljkovi K., Collins G. S., Mannick S., Bland P. A., Morphology and population of binary asteroid impact craters. 0056. ^ New Desert Crater Found Using Google Maps and Free Software ^ Lobpries, Trey A.; Lapen, Thomas J. 1School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. All the inner bodies in our solar system have been heavily bombarded by meteoroids throughout their history. Or it might have struck the planet a million or two years either side of the Mexican cataclysm. The white dashed line shows the NE extent of high-amplitude discontinuous seismic facies at the top Maastrichtian interpreted as ejecta deposits and associated tsunami deposits. In this case, the impact cluster hypothesis would then require further testing by looking for evidence for other undiscovered impact craters of this age and by improving constraints on the flux of Nadir-sized bodies. The upper unit (KU1 to Top Maastrichtian/KP1) consists of a ~500-m sequence of moderate- to low-amplitude seismic reflections. Impact craters of Africa by country (10 C) Pages in category "Impact craters of Africa" This category contains only the following page. An official website of the United States government. But to make a definitive statement, rocks in the crater itself would need to be pulled up and examined. Data courtesy of the Republic of Guinea, TGS and WesternGeco. This . (C) North-South seismic profile from the salt basin in the north to the Nadir Seamount, south of the Guinea Fracture Zone. Much of the crater is now buried under 600m of sediments offshore. Scientists discover a 5-mile wide undersea crater created as the - CNN The newly discovered Nadir crater appears to have formed right around the same time as that cataclysm. However, maars rarely form crater structures larger than 2 to 3 km in diameter and have a characteristic funnel-like morphology (45). If we do prove that this is the sister of the dinosaur killer, then how many other siblings are there?, Questions or comments on this article? A possible impact structure has been discovered in marine sediments off the West African coast. Named Nadir Crater, its structure closely resembles a complex crater and provides an opportunity for planetary researchers to better understand impacts on marine environments. There are no other features anywhere on the Guinea Plateau or Terrace, in either the salt province in the north or the volcanic province in the south, with a morphology similar to that of the Nadir Crater. Theres a lot of things that suggest its an impact, said Gavin Kenny, a geochemist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm who was not involved in the research. Ground zero, on that submarine plateau, would be commemorated by a five-mile-wide crater, one ultimately smothered beneath 1,300 feet of sediment. "Our simulations suggest this crater was caused by the collision of a 400m-wide asteroid in 500-800m of water," explained Dr Veronica Bray from the University of Arizona, US. Journal of African Earth Sciences. This resulted in the formation of large strike-slip faults and subaerial erosion at the southern plateau margin, leading to the formation of a prominent regional unconformity (17). According toLiveScience, the Chicxulub crater, hidden beneath the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, marks the impact site of an asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago. (B) W-E seismic section (pre-stack depth migration depth domain) across the crater, highlighting the crater morphology and damage zone, and the extent of subsurface deformation. Lithological, petrophysical, and biostratigraphic data from the exploration wells were used to constrain the stratigraphic age and lithology of seismic reflections. The dinosaurs were unable to adapt to the changing climate. Data courtesy of the Republic of Guinea, TGS and Western Geco. Vol. Your support enables us to keep our content free and accessible to the next generation of scientists and engineers. A version of this article appears in the September 10, 2022 issue of Science News. Using geologic layers adjacent to Nadir, some with ages obtained by past studies, the team estimated the structure to have formed around the end of the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago. "The Agoudal (High Atlas Mountains, Morocco) shatter cone conundrum: A recent meteorite fall onto the remnant of an impact site". (B) Several seconds later, the transient crater forms, as the impactor and a substantial body of water are vaporized. This cluster is documented both by an increased terrestrial cratering rate, constrained by Ar-Ar dating of impactites (12), and evidence for an elevated flux of extraterrestrial dust across the same >2-Ma period (13). 1). Bray V. J., Hagerty J. J., Collins G. S., False peak creation in the Flynn Creek marine target impact crater, http://www-odp.tamu.edu/Publications/prosp/207_prs/207PROSP.PDF. 2B). A skyscraper-high wall of water would thunder toward the coast at 900 miles per hour. The crater interior also displays a stepped (terraced) morphology near the crater rim. Impact Craters. Science Advances. These features were caused by the collision of large meteorites or comets with the Earth. Although the Top Cretaceous (Top Maastrichtian) reflection is well constrained, the precise age of the intra-upper Cretaceous reflections KU1KU4 remains uncertain because of the low amplitude, laterally discontinuous seismic character, and poor seismic quality in the eastern plateau near the exploration wells. He . 3). Hydrocode model results for a 400-m asteroid impact into various water depths above a sedimentary target are shown inFigs. We then consider the association of this possible impact with other terrestrial events of similar age. (October 2018). Despite the common occurrence of binary (gravitationally coupled) asteroids in near Earth orbit (~15%), only a small number (2 to 4%) of confirmed craters are recognized as potential binary impact structures (9). These include subsurface salt withdrawal or dissolution, gas or fluid escape, collapsed volcanic calderas or maars, collapse features associated with carbonate dissolution, polygonal faulting induced by dewatering, the erosive actions of currents and tectonic (strike-slip pull-apart) deformation, or a combination of these processes (3840).
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