New Sciences Advances paper by Prof. Steven Goderis

24/02/2021 - 23:00

In this Sciences Advances paper (click here for open access) Professor Steven Goderis once and for all demonstrates the link between the formation of the 200-km Chicxulub crater buried under Yucatan and the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg ot K-T) boundary mass extinction by finding the famous elevated iridium concentrations within the impactite rocks drilled in 2016 by IODP-ICDP withint the peak-ring of the impact structrure.  

Image below summarizes the story: 

A) Paleogeographic reconstruction for the Late Cretaceous with K-Pg ejecta sites distal (>5000 km) to very proximal (<500 km) to the Chicxulub impact structure, displaying sites with a detected Ir anomaly.

(B) Iridium anomaly as measured by (1) at the distal Gubbio K-Pg boundary site, Italy. Photo credit for the image Heiko Pälike, MARUM-Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen.

(C) Stars designate positions of drill cores on the Yucatán peninsula mentioned in the text (Y6, Yucatán 6; C1, Chicxulub 1; Yax-1, Yaxcopoil-1), including International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP)–International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) Expedition 364 (green star).

(D) Schematic cross section of the Chicxulub crater, with the location of Site M0077 based on (57).

 

 

This work got some major international media attention: UT Texas newsPlanetary News; Kurier (Vienna); Astronomy News; De Morgen; Het Laatste Nieuws; HLN Interview Steven Goderis; RTBF; RTL_NLSci News; The research was also featured in Physics Today. (Altmetric)