Dinosaur-killing asteroid punctured Earth's crust 65 million years ago, reveals new study

The asteroid that killed dinosaurs about 65 million years ago may have punctured the crust of the Earth, a new study has revealed. The study further said that after the Earth’s crust was punctured, it caused the surface of the planet to behave like a slow-moving fluid.

According to researchers, the new findings may throw light on the face of planets can have an impact that can even generate new habitats for life. Rings of rocky hills are sometimes found in the centres of the major craters and they are known as peak rings.

Extraterrestrial rocky bodies such as the Moon or Venus contain most of these peak rings. This makes it difficult to analyse these structures in detail and find their origins.

Scientists from University of Texas at Austin in the US studied the gargantuan Chicxulub crater in Mexico to learn in detail about the peak rings. The gargantuan Chicxulub crater measures more than 180 kilometres. It is the only creater to have an intact peak ring on Earth.

An epic crash of an object about 10 kilometre wide gave birth to crater, while the resulting impact is thought to have wiped out dinosaurs.

Peak ring samples were examined by the researchers from under 18 metres of water in the Gulf of Mexico.
Sean Gulick, a marine geophysicist at UT Austin, said that they discovered granite that likely once was deeply buried for about 500 million years.

“These deeply buried rocks rose up to the surface of the Earth within the first few minutes of the impact,” Gulick told the ‘Live Science’.

After the impact, “the earth there would have temporarily behaved like a slow-moving fluid,” Gulick said.

“The stony asteroid would have opened up a hole probably almost the thickness of Earth’s crust, almost 30 km deep, and on the order of 80 to 100 km wide,” he added.