Earth and Environment Atlas

How The Planet Works
Phenomena

Chicxulub Impact

Impact Event

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An asteroid strike slightly over 66 million years ago that is now widely accepted as the primary cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, the mass extinction of 75 percent of plant and animal species on Earth, including all non-avian dinosaurs, closing the Mesozoic era and opening the Cenozoic.

Facts
Magnitude or Scale
Impactor roughly ten kilometers across; crater about two hundred kilometers in diameter, buried about one kilometer deep 1
Location
Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, partly onshore and partly under the Gulf of Mexico 1
Cross-Tradition Connections

Causes

Cretaceous, Eras

The impact is the primary accepted cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction that ends this period.

In Discipline

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