Researchers say a tsunami caused by the infamous dinosaur-killing asteroid reached the shallow waters of North America 66 million years ago. If they are correct, then these are the largest structures in the world. Dr. Gary Kinsland of Louisiana University in Lafayette was involved in two seemingly unrelated projects when an unexpected connection was revealed. He was studying the Chixculub crate which marked the end of the Cretaceous era.
Meanwhile, he hired graduate students to map the presence of coal-based methane in northern Louisiana using ground-penetrating radar that reflected changes in surface composition. A graduate student, Care Egegahl, came to Kinsland with a stratal figure showing wave markings on a geographic “horizon” where a significant change in physical features occurred.
Kinsland said in a statement, “I knew his picture was close to [Cretaceous / Paleogene] K / Pg, knew the direction from 3D to Chicxulub, put 2 and 2 together and pronounced … OMG.” Years later, after further investigation, those waves became the subject of a paper on Earth and astronomy papers. They look like people left behind normal waves on a sandy beach – but 16 meters (53 feet) high and 600 (0.4 miles) meters away.
From the observation when you throw a rock into a pond, it is clear that a mile-wide mass wave will form in the Atlantic Ocean. It can be expected that massive tsunamis released by strong influences like Chicxulub will hit distant coastlines, leaving very visible marks, especially on soft land. It is even more amazing to find those impressions after so many years, but these researchers think that the waves were preserved because they were not on the ground, just the depth of the water.
They wrote, “These mega ripples are preserved as a result of the storm waves forming beneath the waves and being buried by the Paleocene deep-water shell.” Once upon a time, the outlines of the seabed have since been buried in mud and soil for about a mile. Nevertheless, their cause can be identified not only from the time of the horizon but also their direction – pointing directly to the Chicxulub. Calculating the depth of the water at that time – about meters 60 meters (197 foot) – and the size of the waves, the authors calculated that the responsible waves could be up to a mile high, which would be in line with previous estimates.
