The Sylacauga Astrobleme and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Event
The final chapter to the Cretaceous-Tertiary event may yet be written with the discovery of a 135km wide astrobleme in central Alabama.
Sixty-five and one half million years ago, a huge asteroid crashed into North America and triggered a chain of events that would lead to one of the most extensive die-offs of life forms on earth ever to occur. Although it had happened before, life had not advanced to the point it had when this one was to take place. For this one would claim the largest of all creatures to ever had lived on planet earth, the dinosaurs. Ever since their discovery, they have captured our imagination, both young and old alike, people of all races and nationalities, the layman and the professor.
Drawing upon the work of many others, I have been researching central Alabama for evidence of an impact that would be sufficient to cause such an event. I now present that evidence to you.
It all began when a huge stony-iron asteroid, or chrondite, approximately 10 kilometers (six miles) in diameter struck into rather thin oceanic crust just east of the southern most tip of the Appalachian Mountains. It would leave a central core of devastation at least 26 kilometers (18 miles) and resultin an astrobleme with a total diameter of 135 kilometers (83 miles). Along the northwest fringes, a second orogenic event would occur along the mountains of the Ridge and Valley Region so structurally deformed it would defy any understanding to this very day.
But the real key to this event lay in where the asteroid struck. By comparison, the giant Sudbury astrobleme in Canada is sixty miles wide and at least eight miles deep but did not penetrate the earth's twelve mile deep continental crush that it happened to impact. With an asteroid of the same size or larger, there is little doubt of the possibility this one could travel the six miles needed to penetrate the lithosphere and explode beneath the earth's crust creating an astrobleme very different from those we know to exist today. By the very nature of the destruction they cause, it is almost a certainty they will be destroyed in the aftermath.
There is a great deal of evidence this occurred and triggered a massive tectonic influx reworking the landscape as it both raised and moved landfill about while at the same time drawing lava from beneath the Gulf of Mexico and perhaps the Atlantic Ocean as well. The result of this influx would certainly have meant a sinking of the ocean floor and the sea regression we all know happened shortly after the impact.
Located in the very heart of the North American K-T strewn field, there was every reason to investigate the area. Actually, the proof of impact was everywhere, although the subsequent tectonic flows had done harm to the eastern side of the astrobleme. When verification of it is finally achieved, it will be the largest astrobleme on the continent. (See graphic).
But first and foremost, proof of impact and the existence of an astrobleme must be established. That is the purpose of this site.