Word: chicxulub
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Dates: during 1991-1991
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...after a decade-long search, the attention of geologists is riveted on a circular basin some 180 km (112 miles) in diameter. It lies buried under 1,100 m (3,600 ft.) of limestone, centered beneath the town of Chicxulub, on the northern tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, and extending out under the Gulf of Mexico. The nature of the basin, its location and a preliminary estimate of its age suggest that it is the Crater, the one gouged into the earth by the comet or asteroid that killed the dinosaurs...
...evidence mounts, more researchers are convinced that the Chicxulub crater marks the impact point of the killer comet. Says Boynton: "This is nearly as close to a certainty as one can get in science." Some scientists disagree. David Archibald, a biologist at San Diego State University, believes the extinctions took place more gradually and in a complex pattern. "There is zero evidence that dinosaurs became extinct virtually overnight...
...Shoemaker points to a well-known crater, 35 km (22 miles) across, that lies partly buried near Manson, Iowa. Its age, established by radioactive dating: 65 million years. / Shoemaker believes the new findings will help persuade more scientists to "get off the fence" and side with the Alvarez theory. "Chicxulub is the smoking cannon," he says, "and Manson is the smoking pistol...