I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I loved dinosaurs and space as a kid, and since it was an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, space won, and now I’m an astronomer. And today, we have a new story about that dino-destroying asteroid. As described by Nikk Ogasa in Science News: A series of ridgelike structures more than three stories high and spaced nearly two Eiffel Towers apart appear to be buried about 1,500 meters beneath central Louisiana. 

These buried megaripples are located in just the right place to have been formed at the moment of the dinosaurs’ demise. These ripples were found by geologists doing an ultrasound of the Earth to look for coal. The geologist in question, Kaare Egedahl, was studying at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and shared his discovery with Gary Kinsland. Together, they and their colleagues were able to piece together from the spacing and orientation of these ridges that they were likely formed as wave after wave from the asteroid-induced tsunami swept through the ocean that covered what is now Louisiana.

A similar structure was formed off the coast of Japan by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, just a whole lot smaller.

These structures were able to survive the following extinction-related storms and other horrors because of their depth and now are part of the layers of our planet… part of the most interesting layers.

It has to be acknowledged that there are some researchers saying the impact that killed the dinosaurs shouldn’t have created something this mundane. Some researchers are claiming that the impact would have been so chaotic that these structures couldn’t have settled out so gracefully, but I’m with the research team on this one. They are aligned correctly, spaced correctly, and really appear to be remnants of one of the worst days of our planet’s existence. And, in a dark and twisted way, this is really awesome science.

More Information

Dinosaur-killing asteroid may have made Earth’s largest ripple marks (Science News)

“Chicxulub impact tsunami megaripples in the subsurface of Louisiana: Imaged in petroleum industry seismic data,” Gary L. Kinsland, Kaare Egedahl, Martell Albert Strong, and Robert Ivy, 2021 September 15, Earth and Planetary Science Letters