About 66 million years ago, a 10-kilometre asteroid struck the Earth, causing dinosaurs to die, and new evidence suggests that the impact on Chixulub also caused an earthquake of such magnitude that it shook the planet within weeks or months of the impact.
Herman Bermuda will present evidence of this "mega-earthquake" at the forthcoming meeting of the Geological Society of America, GSA Connectes, in Denver, United States, on Sunday, 9 October. Earlier this year, Bermudez visited the famous melo-palaeogen border in Texas, Alabama and Mississippi for data collection, complementing his previous work in Colombia and Mexico.
In 2014, in a field study on the island of Gorgonilla in Colombia, Bermudez discovered sediments in the form of balloons and fragments of tectite and microtecite, which were thrown into the atmosphere during an asteroid impact, and these glass balloons formed when the heat and pressure of the impact melted and dispersed the earth's crust, throwing into the atmosphere small molten drops, which then fell back to the surface as glass under the influence of gravity.
When a scientist examined the deformed layer of balloons on Gorgonilla Island in Colombia, he realized that seismic activity after the impact of the asteroid continued for weeks or even months after the impact.
The site that the scientist found on Gorgonilla Island, he called a "fantastic place" to study the K-Pg border. It is one of the most well-retained sites. It is located deep in the ocean, so it was not affected by the tsunami.