The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a graphic Monday showing the tsunami caused by the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago, verifying the potential for cataclysmic flood events.
The dinosaurs died almost all at the same time roughly 66 million years ago when an asteroid blew a massive hole in what is now known as the Chicxulub crater in northern South America. The asteroid is believed to be roughly six miles wide, and collided with Earth to create the mass extinction event that ended the reign of dinosaurs.
Fragments of the asteroid have been found more than 2,000 miles away from the crater, and now evidence suggests that an almost globally-encompassing tsunami washed across the planet after it made impact.
NEW from NOAA SOS: This dataset shows the tsunami wave caused by the asteroid that hit Earth 66 million years ago. The wave was so impressive because the asteroid is estimated to have been 6+ miles (10+ km) in diameter! Want to learn more? https://t.co/MHCGQ1VDEa#dataviz #Data pic.twitter.com/tbIxp7keoy
— NOAA Education (@NOAAeducation) January 30, 2023
The graphic, shared by NOAA, shows how the tsunami impacted coastlines but doesn’t really do justice to the degree of devastation that would have been caused by the impact.
While NOAA and NWS are beholden to governmental funding (so tend to avoid topics like climate change and cataclysms) the graphic comes at a strange time in our pop cultural development. Television series, podcasts and YouTube series with the likes of Graham Hancock, Randall Carlson, Jimmy Corsetti and more, shed light on the geological formations caused by massive, globally-destructive flood events like that in the graphic from NOAA.
Emerging evidence suggests that the most significant climate event in recent history, the Younger Dryas “mini ice age” some 12,900 to 11,700 BC, was not caused by global warming as failed presidential candidate Al Gore continues to argue, but from a devastating asteroid impact. (RELATED: If The Largest Asteroid Near Earth Hit Us, Here’s What It Would Look Like)
New evidence shows that the ice shelves atop the North American continent were melted when our planet went through one or a series of massive asteroid impacts, proxy data of which suggests this is a cyclical trend that occurs every 12-15,000 years or so.
While the NOAA graphic and explainer did not touch upon any of this work, it’s always interesting to see the kind of mental and verbal gymnastics those employed by the organization have to do to ensure the science doesn’t interfere with governmental goals.