Chicxulub crater (nonfiction)

Chicxulub crater location.

The Chicxulub crater (pronunciation: /ˈtʃiːkʃᵿluːb/; Mayan: [tʃʼikʃuluɓ]) is an impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.

Its center is located near the town of Chicxulub, after which the crater is named.

The date of the Chicxulub impactor, which created it, coincides precisely with the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary), around 66 million years ago.

The crater is more than 180 kilometers (110 miles) in diameter and 20 km (12 mi) in depth, well into the continental crust of the region of about 10-30 km depth.

It makes the feature the third of the largest confirmed impact structures on Earth; the impacting bolide that formed the crater was at least 10 km (6 mi) in diameter.

Fiction cross-reference

• Chicxulub Chips - a brand of snack food, consisting primarily of tephra from the Chicxulub crater.

Nonfiction cross-reference

External links:

• Chicxulub crater @ Wikipedia