What a Buried Crater in Mexico Says About the Asteroid That Doomed the Dinosaurs

And why the scars left by meteoritic impacts tell us about life, the universe, and everything. Luna Shyr writes for Atlas Obscura:

IMAGINE STANDING ON THE EDGE of a giant crater, knowing nothing about how this massive hole in the ground came to be. Or figuring out that a cataclysmic event like an asteroid hitting the Earth killed the dinosaurs, but having no visible evidence on the planet of a collision of that magnitude.

The impact triggered a tsunami and unleashed toxic debris high into the atmosphere, which cooled the planet, choked off sunlight, and wiped out much of life on Earth. ELENA DUVERNAY / STOCKTREK IMAGES / GETTY IMAGES

Scientists and explorers have faced such puzzling moments in our history. They may have had inklings that giant collisions happened in the universe, but where and how and whether they still happened are things that modern scientists are only now able to answer with some degree of certainty. Until they started to, around the mid-20th century, craters like Arizona’s Meteor Crater and those on the moon were largely thought to be volcanic in origin.

Like detectives piecing together clues across time and space, scientists who study impact craters are revealing the stories of these fascinating planetary and lunar scars. Most recently, a new study on the Chicxulub crater in Mexico concludes that the asteroid that led to the dinosaur-ending mass extinction 66 million years ago likely struck at a steep angle and high speed that maximized the lethal effects that followed. Read More