The largest known submarine landslide has been identified in the Gulf of Mexico, generated by the Chicxulub extraterrestrial impact which also caused the mass-extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period, providing new evidence for widespread Chicxulub-induced slope failure.
The landslide, the single largest-known mass wasting deposit, was triggered when seismic shock waves and tsunamis caused sediments on the Gulf of Mexico sea floor deposited during the prior 10 million years to be eroded and lifted up into the water column.
These sediments then settled back down onto the seafloor over the following weeks, blanketing the entire deep-water Gulf of Mexico with a deposit up to 200 meters thick and a volume of 100,000 cubic kilometers, 10 times larger than any other known submarine landslide deposit.
The deposit at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary was recognized in 31 industry-drilled wells from the deep-water Gulf of Mexico and on seismic images.
These new findings provide crucial evidence of the Chicxulub impact's destructive effects on the Gulf of Mexico region and place doubt on claims of the existence of a separate extraterrestrial impact larger than Chicxulub at the end of the Cretaceous.
Richard A. Denne et al., Marathon Oil Corporation, DOI: 10.1130/G34503.1.
