Will someone tell me about that crater?

Ian

At the northern tip of South America there appears to be a gigantic circular 'crater' dating back millions of years that is only visible from satellite images.

How old? what is it? Its effect?
Any info please.

thanks,
Ian.

Andre

Thats probably the Chicxulub crater that allegedly killed the dinosaurs. Scientists are not so sure anymore.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/a...sh_1056908.htm

Ian

That supposed impact crater is mostly beneath the sea but also appears on land. If it were somewhere else I might accept it as an impact crater, but due to it's geographic location it simply cannot be the remnant of an impact.

Andre

What's the problem? 63 million years of sedimentation and tectonics is more than enough to build complete mountains on top of it, burying it completely.

Ian

Yeah thats right, 60 million years of sedimentation to cover it and 60 milliion years of tectonic motion to break it up. The crater lies on a collision boundary so tectonics should have broken it up not preserved it. It should be severely mis-shapen after all that time.

matthyaouw

Actually, from what I can see, it is quite a distance from the nearest boundary, and outside of the regions of recent tectonic deformation.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com:8...es/le03_01.jpg

http://www.huttoncommentaries.com/Ot...SAm_P&A750.jpg