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 of bolide-weakened lithostratigraphy around the impact crater wall. More recent evidence suggests the actual crater is wide, and the 180 km ring is in fact an inner wall of it. Researchers at the University of Glasgow dated tektite samples from the impact as 66,038,000 ± 11,000 years old. The Chicxulub impactor had an estimated diameter of , and delivered an estimated energy of 21–921 billion Hiroshima A-bombs (between formula_1 and formula_2 joules, or 1.3–58 YJ). By contrast, the most powerful man-made explosive device ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba, had an energy of only 210 petajoules (formula_3 joules, the yield of