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Rock cores
Search for the effects of the Chicxulub asteroid impact on life
International expedition to the Chicxulub impact crater
[12. October 2016]
In April and May, 2016, a team of international scientists drilled into the site of the asteroid impact, known as the Chicxulub Impact Crater, which occurred 66 million years ago. The crater is buried several hundred meters below the surface in the Yucatán region of México. This joint expedition, organized by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) recovered a nearly complete set of rock cores from 506 to 1335 meters below the modern day seafloor.
With over 99 per cent successful recovery, these cores will now be studied in detail by the team for a first pass of understanding the effects of the impact on life and as a case study of how impacts affect planets. The cores were first scanned in Texas using medical CT-imaging (Weatherford Labs, Houston, USA) and processed by Enthought, Inc. (Austin, USA). Now they are at the IODP Core Repository at the MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen (Germany).
While the crater marks the impact – infamous for causing 75 per cent of life on Earth to go extinct –, the team has also found that microbial life found a foothold in the crater likely taking advantage of the chemistry and porous nature of the broken and melted rocks.
For further information please viist the MARUM website