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71-551: KTB can mean: Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary also known as Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary Khatib MRT station (station abbreviation KTB), Yishun, Singapore Krung Thai Bank , state-owned Thai commercial bank KTB ML(military logistics) Vietnam. since 1981 (Change to a start-up investment company in 1986) ktb, ISO 639-3 code for the Kambaata language KTB, IATA code for Thorne Bay seaplane base K-T-B , triconsonantal root of

142-481: A concentration of iridium hundreds of times greater than normal. They suggested that this layer was evidence of an impact event that triggered worldwide climate disruption and caused the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event , a mass extinction in which 75% of plant and animal species on Earth suddenly became extinct, including all non- avian dinosaurs . When it was originally proposed, one issue with

213-433: A paraboloid (bowl-shaped) crater in which the centre has been pushed down, a significant volume of material has been ejected, and a topographically elevated crater rim has been pushed up. When this cavity has reached its maximum size, it is called the transient cavity. The depth of the transient cavity is typically a quarter to a third of its diameter. Ejecta thrown out of the crater do not include material excavated from

284-520: A sulfuric acid aerosol . This would have further reduced the sunlight reaching the Earth's surface and then over several days, precipitated planet-wide as acid rain , killing vegetation, plankton and organisms which build shells from calcium carbonate ( coccolithophorids and molluscs ). Before 2000, arguments that the Deccan Traps flood basalts caused the extinction were usually linked to

355-580: A ballistic trajectory into space before it fell down as an impactor. Due to the spectacular nature of this proposed mechanism, the scientific community has largely reacted with skepticism to this hypothesis. It is possible that more than one of these hypotheses may be a partial solution to the mystery, and that more than one of these events may have occurred. Both the Deccan Traps and the Chicxulub impact may have been important contributors. For example,

426-468: A certain altitude (retardation point), and start to accelerate again due to Earth's gravity until the body reaches its terminal velocity of 0.09 to 0.16 km/s. The larger the meteoroid (i.e. asteroids and comets) the more of its initial cosmic velocity it preserves. While an object of 9,000 kg maintains about 6% of its original velocity, one of 900,000 kg already preserves about 70%. Extremely large bodies (about 100,000 tonnes) are not slowed by

497-455: A hole in the surface without filling in nearby craters. This may explain the 'sponge-like' appearance of that moon. It is convenient to divide the impact process conceptually into three distinct stages: (1) initial contact and compression, (2) excavation, (3) modification and collapse. In practice, there is overlap between the three processes with, for example, the excavation of the crater continuing in some regions while modification and collapse

568-452: A large impact. The subsequent excavation of the crater occurs more slowly, and during this stage the flow of material is largely subsonic. During excavation, the crater grows as the accelerated target material moves away from the point of impact. The target's motion is initially downwards and outwards, but it becomes outwards and upwards. The flow initially produces an approximately hemispherical cavity that continues to grow, eventually producing

639-402: A number of Semitic words Kontinentales Tiefbohrprogramm der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ( German Continental Deep Drilling Program ), a German scientific project KTB, stock symbol for Kontoor Brands Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title KTB . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change

710-558: A regular sequence with increasing size: small complex craters with a central topographic peak are called central peak craters, for example Tycho ; intermediate-sized craters, in which the central peak is replaced by a ring of peaks, are called peak-ring craters , for example Schrödinger ; and the largest craters contain multiple concentric topographic rings, and are called multi-ringed basins , for example Orientale . On icy (as opposed to rocky) bodies, other morphological forms appear that may have central pits rather than central peaks, and at

781-409: A result, the impactor is compressed, its density rises, and the pressure within it increases dramatically. Peak pressures in large impacts exceed 1 T Pa to reach values more usually found deep in the interiors of planets, or generated artificially in nuclear explosions . In physical terms, a shock wave originates from the point of contact. As this shock wave expands, it decelerates and compresses

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852-441: A significant crater volume may also be formed by the permanent compaction of the pore space . Such compaction craters may be important on many asteroids, comets and small moons. In large impacts, as well as material displaced and ejected to form the crater, significant volumes of target material may be melted and vaporized together with the original impactor. Some of this impact melt rock may be ejected, but most of it remains within

923-419: A single impact event. The Deccan Traps could have caused extinction through several mechanisms, including the release of dust and sulfuric aerosols into the air which might have blocked sunlight and thereby reduced photosynthesis in plants. In addition, Deccan Trap volcanism might have resulted in carbon dioxide emissions which would have increased the greenhouse effect when the dust and aerosols cleared from

994-406: A small angle, and high-temperature highly shocked material is expelled from the convergence zone with velocities that may be several times larger than the impact velocity. In most circumstances, the transient cavity is not stable and collapses under gravity. In small craters, less than about 4 km diameter on Earth, there is some limited collapse of the crater rim coupled with debris sliding down

1065-402: Is already underway in others. In the absence of atmosphere , the impact process begins when the impactor first touches the target surface. This contact accelerates the target and decelerates the impactor. Because the impactor is moving so rapidly, the rear of the object moves a significant distance during the short-but-finite time taken for the deceleration to propagate across the impactor. As

1136-488: Is currently accepted as the most likely is that the mid-ocean ridges became less active and therefore sank under their own weight as sediment from uplifted orogenic belts filled in structural basins. A severe regression would have greatly reduced the continental shelf area, which is the most species-rich part of the sea, and therefore could have been enough to cause a marine mass extinction. However, research concludes that this change would have been insufficient to cause

1207-528: Is derived from the Latin "creta" (chalk). It is abbreviated K (as in "K–Pg boundary") for its German translation "Kreide" (chalk). In 1980, a team of researchers led by Nobel prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez , his son, geologist Walter Alvarez , and chemists Frank Asaro and Helen Vaughn Michel discovered that sedimentary layers found all over the world at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary contain

1278-512: Is ejected from close to the center of impact, and the slowest material is ejected close to the rim at low velocities to form an overturned coherent flap of ejecta immediately outside the rim. As ejecta escapes from the growing crater, it forms an expanding curtain in the shape of an inverted cone. The trajectory of individual particles within the curtain is thought to be largely ballistic. Small volumes of un-melted and relatively un-shocked material may be spalled at very high relative velocities from

1349-459: Is estimated that the value of materials mined from impact structures is five billion dollars/year just for North America. The eventual usefulness of impact craters depends on several factors, especially the nature of the materials that were impacted and when the materials were affected. In some cases, the deposits were already in place and the impact brought them to the surface. These are called "progenetic economic deposits." Others were created during

1420-540: Is located near the town of Chicxulub , after which the crater is named. It was formed by a large asteroid or comet about 10–15 km (6.2–9.3 mi) in diameter, the Chicxulub impactor , striking the Earth. The date of the impact coincides precisely with the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary), slightly more than 66 million years ago. The crater is estimated to be over 150 km (93 mi) in diameter and 20 km (12 mi) in depth, well into

1491-404: Is sufficient to melt the impactor, and in larger impacts to vaporize most of it and to melt large volumes of the target. As well as being heated, the target near the impact is accelerated by the shock wave, and it continues moving away from the impact behind the decaying shock wave. Contact, compression, decompression, and the passage of the shock wave all occur within a few tenths of a second for

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1562-437: Is the largest goldfield in the world, which has supplied about 40% of all the gold ever mined in an impact structure (though the gold did not come from the bolide). The asteroid that struck the region was 9.7 km (6 mi) wide. The Sudbury Basin was caused by an impacting body over 9.7 km (6 mi) in diameter. This basin is famous for its deposits of nickel , copper , and platinum group elements . An impact

1633-408: The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event , a mass extinction which destroyed a majority of the world's Mesozoic species, including all dinosaurs except for some birds . Strong evidence exists that the extinction coincided with a large meteorite impact at the Chicxulub crater and the generally accepted scientific theory is that this impact triggered the extinction event. The word "Cretaceous"

1704-575: The Dinosaur Park Formation . Another consequence was an expansion of freshwater environments, since continental runoff now had longer distances to travel before reaching oceans. While this change was favorable to freshwater vertebrates , those that prefer marine environments, such as sharks , suffered. Another discredited cause for the K–Pg extinction event is cosmic radiation from a nearby supernova explosion. An iridium anomaly at

1775-497: The Nevada Test Site , notably Jangle U in 1951 and Teapot Ess in 1955. In 1960, Edward C. T. Chao and Shoemaker identified coesite (a form of silicon dioxide ) at Meteor Crater, proving the crater was formed from an impact generating extremely high temperatures and pressures. They followed this discovery with the identification of coesite within suevite at Nördlinger Ries , proving its impact origin. Armed with

1846-654: The North Sea (60–65 Ma). Any other craters that might have formed in the Tethys Ocean would have been obscured by erosion and tectonic events such as the relentless northward drift of Africa and India. A very large structure in the sea floor off the west coast of India was interpreted in 2006 as a crater by three researchers. The potential Shiva crater , 450–600 km (280–370 mi) in diameter, would substantially exceed Chicxulub in size and has been estimated to be about 66 mya, an age consistent with

1917-462: The continental crust of the region of about 10–30 km (6.2–18.6 mi) depth. It makes the feature the second of the largest confirmed impact structures on Earth , and the only one whose peak ring is intact and directly accessible for scientific research. The crater was discovered by Antonio Camargo and Glen Penfield, geophysicists who had been looking for petroleum in the Yucatán during

1988-490: The peak ring of the impact crater, hundreds of meters below the current sea floor, to obtain rock core samples from the impact itself. The discoveries were widely seen as confirming current theories related to both the crater impact and its effects. The shape and location of the crater indicate further causes of devastation in addition to the dust cloud. The asteroid landed right on the coast and would have caused gigantic tsunamis , for which evidence has been found all around

2059-429: The speed of sound in those objects. Such hyper-velocity impacts produce physical effects such as melting and vaporization that do not occur in familiar sub-sonic collisions. On Earth, ignoring the slowing effects of travel through the atmosphere, the lowest impact velocity with an object from space is equal to the gravitational escape velocity of about 11 km/s. The fastest impacts occur at about 72 km/s in

2130-399: The stable interior regions of continents . Few undersea craters have been discovered because of the difficulty of surveying the sea floor, the rapid rate of change of the ocean bottom, and the subduction of the ocean floor into Earth's interior by processes of plate tectonics . Daniel M. Barringer, a mining engineer, was convinced already in 1903 that the crater he owned, Meteor Crater ,

2201-548: The " Alvarez hypothesis " (as it came to be known) was that no documented crater matched the event. This was not a lethal blow to the theory; while the crater resulting from the impact would have been larger than 250 km (160 mi) in diameter, Earth's geological processes hide or destroy craters over time. The Chicxulub crater is an impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico . Its center

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2272-441: The "worst case" scenario in which an object in a retrograde near-parabolic orbit hits Earth. The median impact velocity on Earth is about 20 km/s. However, the slowing effects of travel through the atmosphere rapidly decelerate any potential impactor, especially in the lowest 12 kilometres where 90% of the Earth's atmospheric mass lies. Meteorites of up to 7,000 kg lose all their cosmic velocity due to atmospheric drag at

2343-584: The K–Pg boundary. An impact at this site could have been the triggering event for the nearby Deccan Traps. However, this feature has not yet been accepted by the geologic community as an impact crater and may just be a sinkhole depression caused by salt withdrawal. Clear evidence exists that sea levels fell in the final stage of the Cretaceous by more than at any other time in the Mesozoic era. In some Maastrichtian stage rock layers from various parts of

2414-478: The actual impact. The great energy involved caused melting. Useful minerals formed as a result of this energy are classified as "syngenetic deposits." The third type, called "epigenetic deposits," is caused by the creation of a basin from the impact. Many of the minerals that our modern lives depend on are associated with impacts in the past. The Vredeford Dome in the center of the Witwatersrand Basin

2485-469: The association of volcanic flows and other volcanic materials. Impact craters produce melted rocks as well, but usually in smaller volumes with different characteristics. The distinctive mark of an impact crater is the presence of rock that has undergone shock-metamorphic effects, such as shatter cones , melted rocks, and crystal deformations. The problem is that these materials tend to be deeply buried, at least for simple craters. They tend to be revealed in

2556-432: The atmosphere at all, and impact with their initial cosmic velocity if no prior disintegration occurs. Impacts at these high speeds produce shock waves in solid materials, and both impactor and the material impacted are rapidly compressed to high density. Following initial compression, the high-density, over-compressed region rapidly depressurizes, exploding violently, to set in train the sequence of events that produces

2627-405: The atmosphere. In the years when the Deccan Traps theory was linked to a slower extinction, Luis Alvarez (who died in 1988) replied that paleontologists were being misled by sparse data . While his assertion was not initially well-received, later intensive field studies of fossil beds lent weight to his claim. Eventually, most paleontologists began to accept the idea that the mass extinctions at

2698-542: The boundary is consistent with this hypothesis. However, analysis of the boundary layer sediments failed to find Pu , a supernova byproduct which is the longest-lived plutonium isotope, with a half-life of 81 million years. An attempt to link volcanism – like the Deccan Traps – and impact events causally in the other direction compared to the proposed Shiva crater is the so-called Verneshot hypothesis (named for Jules Verne ), which proposes that volcanism might have gotten so intense as to "shoot up" material into

2769-470: The coast of the Caribbean and eastern United States—marine sand in locations which were then inland, and vegetation debris and terrestrial rocks in marine sediments dated to the time of the impact. The asteroid landed in a bed of anhydrite ( CaSO 4 ) or gypsum (CaSO 4 ·2(H 2 O)), which would have ejected large quantities of sulfur trioxide SO 3 that combined with water to produce

2840-451: The collapse and modification of the transient cavity is much more extensive, and the resulting structure is called a complex crater . The collapse of the transient cavity is driven by gravity, and involves both the uplift of the central region and the inward collapse of the rim. The central uplift is not the result of elastic rebound, which is a process in which a material with elastic strength attempts to return to its original geometry; rather

2911-468: The collapse is a process in which a material with little or no strength attempts to return to a state of gravitational equilibrium . Complex craters have uplifted centers, and they have typically broad flat shallow crater floors, and terraced walls . At the largest sizes, one or more exterior or interior rings may appear, and the structure may be labeled an impact basin rather than an impact crater. Complex-crater morphology on rocky planets appears to follow

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2982-451: The crater walls and drainage of impact melts into the deeper cavity. The resultant structure is called a simple crater, and it remains bowl-shaped and superficially similar to the transient crater. In simple craters, the original excavation cavity is overlain by a lens of collapse breccia , ejecta and melt rock, and a portion of the central crater floor may sometimes be flat. Above a certain threshold size, which varies with planetary gravity,

3053-456: The craters on the Moon as logical impact sites that were formed not gradually, in eons , but explosively, in seconds." For his PhD degree at Princeton University (1960), under the guidance of Harry Hammond Hess , Shoemaker studied the impact dynamics of Meteor Crater. Shoemaker noted that Meteor Crater had the same form and structure as two explosion craters created from atomic bomb tests at

3124-548: The dominant geographic features on many solid Solar System objects including the Moon , Mercury , Callisto , Ganymede , and most small moons and asteroids . On other planets and moons that experience more active surface geological processes, such as Earth , Venus , Europa , Io , Titan , and Triton , visible impact craters are less common because they become eroded , buried, or transformed by tectonic and volcanic processes over time. Where such processes have destroyed most of

3195-488: The end of the Cretaceous were largely or at least partly due to a massive Earth impact. However, even Walter Alvarez has acknowledged that there were other major changes on Earth even before the impact, such as a drop in sea level and massive volcanic eruptions that produced the Indian Deccan Traps, and these may have contributed to the extinctions. Several other craters also appear to have been formed about

3266-407: The expanding vapor cloud may rise to many times the scale height of the atmosphere, effectively expanding into free space. Most material ejected from the crater is deposited within a few crater radii, but a small fraction may travel large distances at high velocity, and in large impacts it may exceed escape velocity and leave the impacted planet or moon entirely. The majority of the fastest material

3337-401: The full depth of the transient cavity; typically the depth of maximum excavation is only about a third of the total depth. As a result, about one third of the volume of the transient crater is formed by the ejection of material, and the remaining two thirds is formed by the displacement of material downwards, outwards and upwards, to form the elevated rim. For impacts into highly porous materials,

3408-448: The geologists John D. Boon and Claude C. Albritton Jr. revisited Bucher's studies and concluded that the craters that he studied were probably formed by impacts. Grove Karl Gilbert suggested in 1893 that the Moon's craters were formed by large asteroid impacts. Ralph Baldwin in 1949 wrote that the Moon's craters were mostly of impact origin. Around 1960, Gene Shoemaker revived the idea. According to David H. Levy , Shoemaker "saw

3479-599: The impact crater. Impact-crater formation is therefore more closely analogous to cratering by high explosives than by mechanical displacement. Indeed, the energy density of some material involved in the formation of impact craters is many times higher than that generated by high explosives. Since craters are caused by explosions , they are nearly always circular – only very low-angle impacts cause significantly elliptical craters. This describes impacts on solid surfaces. Impacts on porous surfaces, such as that of Hyperion , may produce internal compression without ejecta, punching

3550-521: The impactor, and it accelerates and compresses the target. Stress levels within the shock wave far exceed the strength of solid materials; consequently, both the impactor and the target close to the impact site are irreversibly damaged. Many crystalline minerals can be transformed into higher-density phases by shock waves; for example, the common mineral quartz can be transformed into the higher-pressure forms coesite and stishovite . Many other shock-related changes take place within both impactor and target as

3621-764: The knowledge of shock-metamorphic features, Carlyle S. Beals and colleagues at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria, British Columbia , Canada and Wolf von Engelhardt of the University of Tübingen in Germany began a methodical search for impact craters. By 1970, they had tentatively identified more than 50. Although their work was controversial, the American Apollo Moon landings, which were in progress at

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3692-649: The largest sizes may contain many concentric rings. Valhalla on Callisto is an example of this type. Long after an impact event, a crater may be further modified by erosion, mass wasting processes, viscous relaxation, or erased entirely. These effects are most prominent on geologically and meteorologically active bodies such as Earth, Titan, Triton, and Io. However, heavily modified craters may be found on more primordial bodies such as Callisto, where many ancient craters flatten into bright ghost craters, or palimpsests . Non-explosive volcanic craters can usually be distinguished from impact craters by their irregular shape and

3763-441: The late 1970s. Penfield was initially unable to obtain evidence that the geological feature was a crater and gave up his search. Later, through contact with Alan Hildebrand in 1990, Penfield obtained samples that suggested it was an impact feature. Evidence for the impact origin of the crater includes shocked quartz , a gravity anomaly , and tektites in surrounding areas. In 2016, a scientific drilling project drilled deep into

3834-411: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=KTB&oldid=1204588520 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary The K–Pg boundary is associated with

3905-524: The most recent dating of the Deccan Traps supports the idea that rapid eruption rates in the Deccan Traps may have been triggered by large seismic waves radiated by the impact. Impact crater An impact crater is a depression in the surface of a solid astronomical body formed by the hypervelocity impact of a smaller object. In contrast to volcanic craters , which result from explosion or internal collapse, impact craters typically have raised rims and floors that are lower in elevation than

3976-622: The observed level of ammonite extinction. The regression would also have caused climate changes, partly by disrupting winds and ocean currents and partly by reducing the Earth's albedo and therefore increasing global temperatures. Marine regression also resulted in the reduction in area of epeiric seas , such as the Western Interior Seaway of North America. The reduction of these seas greatly altered habitats, removing coastal plains that ten million years before had been host to diverse communities such as are found in rocks of

4047-411: The original crater topography , the terms impact structure or astrobleme are more commonly used. In early literature, before the significance of impact cratering was widely recognised, the terms cryptoexplosion or cryptovolcanic structure were often used to describe what are now recognised as impact-related features on Earth. The cratering records of very old surfaces, such as Mercury, the Moon, and

4118-711: The outer Solar System could be different from the inner Solar System. Although Earth's active surface processes quickly destroy the impact record, about 190 terrestrial impact craters have been identified. These range in diameter from a few tens of meters up to about 300 km (190 mi), and they range in age from recent times (e.g. the Sikhote-Alin craters in Russia whose creation was witnessed in 1947) to more than two billion years, though most are less than 500 million years old because geological processes tend to obliterate older craters. They are also selectively found in

4189-479: The planet than have been discovered so far. The cratering rate in the inner solar system fluctuates as a consequence of collisions in the asteroid belt that create a family of fragments that are often sent cascading into the inner solar system. Formed in a collision 80 million years ago, the Baptistina family of asteroids is thought to have caused a large spike in the impact rate. The rate of impact cratering in

4260-419: The shock wave passes through, and some of these changes can be used as diagnostic tools to determine whether particular geological features were produced by impact cratering. As the shock wave decays, the shocked region decompresses towards more usual pressures and densities. The damage produced by the shock wave raises the temperature of the material. In all but the smallest impacts this increase in temperature

4331-464: The southern highlands of Mars, record a period of intense early bombardment in the inner Solar System around 3.9 billion years ago. The rate of crater production on Earth has since been considerably lower, but it is appreciable nonetheless. Earth experiences, on average, from one to three impacts large enough to produce a 20-kilometre-diameter (12 mi) crater every million years. This indicates that there should be far more relatively young craters on

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4402-425: The surface of the target and from the rear of the impactor. Spalling provides a potential mechanism whereby material may be ejected into inter-planetary space largely undamaged, and whereby small volumes of the impactor may be preserved undamaged even in large impacts. Small volumes of high-speed material may also be generated early in the impact by jetting. This occurs when two surfaces converge rapidly and obliquely at

4473-507: The surrounding terrain. Impact craters are typically circular, though they can be elliptical in shape or even irregular due to events such as landslides. Impact craters range in size from microscopic craters seen on lunar rocks returned by the Apollo Program to simple bowl-shaped depressions and vast, complex, multi-ringed impact basins . Meteor Crater is a well-known example of a small impact crater on Earth. Impact craters are

4544-647: The time of the K–Pg boundary. This suggests the possibility of nearly simultaneous multiple impacts, perhaps from a fragmented asteroidal object, similar to the Shoemaker–Levy 9 cometary impact with Jupiter . Among these are the Boltysh crater , a 24 km (15 mi) diameter impact crater in Ukraine (65.17 ± 0.64 Ma); and the Silverpit crater , a 20 km (12 mi) diameter proposed impact crater in

4615-473: The time, provided supportive evidence by recognizing the rate of impact cratering on the Moon . Because the processes of erosion on the Moon are minimal, craters persist. Since the Earth could be expected to have roughly the same cratering rate as the Moon, it became clear that the Earth had suffered far more impacts than could be seen by counting evident craters. Impact cratering involves high velocity collisions between solid objects, typically much greater than

4686-411: The transient crater, initially forming a layer of impact melt coating the interior of the transient cavity. In contrast, the hot dense vaporized material expands rapidly out of the growing cavity, carrying some solid and molten material within it as it does so. As this hot vapor cloud expands, it rises and cools much like the archetypal mushroom cloud generated by large nuclear explosions. In large impacts,

4757-403: The uplifted center of a complex crater, however. Impacts produce distinctive shock-metamorphic effects that allow impact sites to be distinctively identified. Such shock-metamorphic effects can include: On Earth, impact craters have resulted in useful minerals. Some of the ores produced from impact related effects on Earth include ores of iron , uranium , gold , copper , and nickel . It

4828-435: The view that the extinction was gradual, as the flood basalt events were thought to have started around 68 Ma and lasted for over 2 million years. However, there is evidence that two thirds of the Deccan Traps were created within 1 million years about 65.5 Ma, so these eruptions would have caused a fairly rapid extinction, possibly a period of thousands of years, but still a longer period than what would be expected from

4899-416: The world, the later ones are terrestrial; earlier ones represent shorelines and the earliest represent seabeds. These layers do not show the tilting and distortion associated with mountain building ; therefore, the likeliest explanation is a regression , that is, a buildout of sediment, but not necessarily a drop in sea level. No direct evidence exists for the cause of the regression, but the explanation which

4970-684: Was involved in making the Carswell structure in Saskatchewan , Canada; it contains uranium deposits. Hydrocarbons are common around impact structures. Fifty percent of impact structures in North America in hydrocarbon-bearing sedimentary basins contain oil/gas fields. On Earth, the recognition of impact craters is a branch of geology, and is related to planetary geology in the study of other worlds. Out of many proposed craters, relatively few are confirmed. The following twenty are

5041-519: Was of cosmic origin. Most geologists at the time assumed it formed as the result of a volcanic steam eruption. In the 1920s, the American geologist Walter H. Bucher studied a number of sites now recognized as impact craters in the United States. He concluded they had been created by some great explosive event, but believed that this force was probably volcanic in origin. However, in 1936,

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