Chicxulub impactor Chicxulub impactor The Chicxulub impactor ( ), also known as the K/Pg impactor and (more speculatively) as the Chicxulub asteroid, was an asteroid or other celestial body some in diameter which struck the Earth at the end of the Cretaceous period, approximately 66 million years ago, creating the Chicxulub crater. It impacted a few miles from the present-day town of Chicxulub in Mexico, after which the impactor and its crater are named. Because the estimated date of the object's impact and the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary) coincide, there is a scientific consensus that its impact was the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event
Chicxulub crater analysis, arguing that there might only be gaps of hours to days between impacts in a multiple-impact scenario (cf. Shoemaker-Levy 9) which would not leave a detectable gap in deposits. Chicxulub is the only known Earth crater with a remaining impact peak ring, but it is under of sediment. During April and May 2016, a joint IODP-ICDP Mission Specific Platform Expedition no. 364 obtained the first offshore core samples from the peak ring, the central zone of the crater. During Expedition 364, DES drillers on the "L/B Myrtle" collected core samples to enable ECORD Science Party members to study how