2019/04/01 by Robert A. DePalma, Jan Smit, David A. Burnham +9 · 5 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Geological formations and processes #Geological and Geochemical Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.1073/pnas.1817407116
openalex publication_date 2019/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Significance The Chicxulub impact played a crucial role in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction. However the earliest postimpact effects, critical to fully decode the profound influence on Earth’s biota, are poorly understood due to a lack of high-temporal-resolution contemporaneous deposits. The Tanis site, which preserves a rapidly deposited, ejecta-bearing bed in the Hell Creek Formation, helps to resolve that long-standing deficit. Emplaced immediately (minutes to hours) after impact, Tanis provides a postimpact “snapshot,” including ejecta accretion and faunal mass death, advancing our understanding of the immediate effects of the Chicxulub impact. Moreover, we demonstrate that the depositional event, calculated to have coincided with the arrival of seismic waves from Chicxulub, likely resulted from a seismically coupled local seiche.