ABOVE: Expedition
364 set up a scientific
platform in the ocean
and spent April and May
drilling into the seabed
to extract core samples
from the Chicxulub
impact craterLEFT: A foraminifera
fossil. These
tiny creatures
proliferated and
diversified rapidly after
the Chicxulub impactfind could help us to understand why this single
rock had such lethal and far-reaching consequences
across the entire planet, but also how life was able to
recover following the impact.
INTO THE IMPACT
Core 40 is of interest because this section may help
explain how one asteroid (or comet) could have had
such global consequences. Up to this point, the team
had pulled out 39 cores of limestone all the way from
500m to 620m below the seabed. “Then suddenly we
hit a layer with fragments in it,” says Gulick.
They’d found the top of a thick blanket of ‘breccia’,
a jumbled layer of the shattered, melted and
traumatised debris that settled in the minutes or hours
after impact. “I didn’t expect it to be this nice, sharp
transition from limestone into angular material with
melt in it,” says Gulick.
Of particular interest are the microfossils that sit just
above this breccia, which should paint a vivid picture of