Logan McColl and Kenzie Nix

Class Activity: Chicxulub Asteroid

Title
1) The main words are asteroid impact and mass extinction.
Abstract
2) The paper is about assessing the cause of the mass extinction by looking at the
Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary and the fossil records and global patterns. The important
words are Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, mass extinction, and Chicxulub asteroid.
3) The authors are looking through global records in the Cretaceous-paleogene boundary
to discover the cause of the mass extinction (from which causes have been proposed, ex
the Deccan flood basalt volcanism in India).
Fist Paragraphs
4) The main words are: Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, Chicxulub Crater, impact ejecta,
and climatically sensitive gases.
5) Major sources of evidence of the impact include a very large crater located near
Chicxulub, dense impact brecca that radiates out and thins as one moves further from the
crater, ejecta rich deposits (contain spherules and shocked minerals) found in the same
pattern as the impact brecca, and shocked quartz grains found in a similar distribution
consistent with the impact.
Second Paragraph
6) Other evidence for alternative mechanisms for the mass extinction include the Deccan
flood basalt eruptions (India) that would have released huge quantities of
environmentally damaging (ex. global warming) gases that very well could have led to
mass extinction (they occurred during the same period). Also some scientists assert that
the meteorite preceded the mass extinction event (by several hundred thousand years).
Third Paragraph
7) The authors are looking at stratigraphic, micropaleontological, petrological, and
geochemical data at the K-Pg boundary and looking at the presence of life before and
after the boundary. The data will be used to compare the hypothesized environmental
effects/extinction mechanisms of the impact and volcanism extinction theories.
8) Figure 1 is showing the events across the cretaceous-paleogene boundary in
comparison to the mineral and chemical records from a core in the North Atlantic Ocean
drilling core, the Decca flood traps (activity), and the amount of extinction at the end of
the Cretaceous Period and the amount of blooms of new species at the beginning of the
Paleogene Period.
9) Figure 2 shows the Deep-Sea drill sites (Deep Sea Drilling Project) and it color codes
the four different types of K-Pg boundary event deposits based on their relative distance
and shows their different mineral composition, which is directly correlated to the drill site
distance from the impact at Chicxulub. The distances range from Very Proximinal
(labeled purple), which contains the largest amount of brecca, to Distal (labeled yellow),
which contains very few signature minerals but is shown to contain some shocked
minerals and ejecta spherules.
10) Widespread extinctions that occurred shortly after the impact, as shown by the
distribution and dating of various ejecta. This mass extinctions timing correlates strongly

with the scale of environmental changes observed and caused by the impact. Ecological
extinction patterns also agree with environmental perturbations.
11) The initial impact wouldve caused huge earthquakes, tsunamis, and increased
surface temperature caused by the atmospheric reentry of ejecta spherules. The also
impact caused the release of climatically sensitive gases that are hypothesized to have
detrimental environmental effects such as, extended darkness, global cooling, and acid
rain.
12) Fossil records show that many animal groups disappeared from the boundary
completely while others were changed in their compositions. Loss of photosynthesis due
to darkness in the Oceans could be the cause of the extinctions. Survival of cyst-forming
dinoflagellates suggests cooling after the impact. There was also a loss of vegetation,
shown by high fungal levels indicating the stop of photosynthesis on land.
13) They have concluded that the Chicxulub impact did in fact trigger the mass
extinction, based on the evidence from environmental disturbances and ecological
extinction patterns. In addition, the idea that the mass extinction was caused by
volcanism is not supported by the timing, composition, and distribution of ejecta.