The impact of giant meteors may have launched a massive landslide of the Grand Canyon 56,000 years ago
The former impact of the meteors which formed the barringer crater of Arizona sent shock waves through the Grand Canyon – probably triggering a landslide that blew up the Colorado river, suggests a new study.
Barringer Crater, also called meteor, was formed between 53,000 and 63,000 years old, when a Giant “Courbeball” struck a hole on the surface of the earth. The force of the impact has traveled more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the Grand Canyon, which may have had a whole cliff in the river, found scientists.
Discovery, described on July 15 in the review Geologylinked two major events that were considered unrelated.
“There are other possibilities, such as a random rock fall or a local earthquake in the thousand years of the impact of meteor crater which could have occurred independently” ” Karl KarstromProfessor of land and planetary sciences at the University of New Mexico and the main author of the study, said in a statement.
But the events described are extraordinary, said Karlstrom – and they occurred in a strangely small period of time, suggesting that they were linked.
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The researchers already knew that the Colorado river flooded the Grand Canyon at the end of the end Pleistocene (129,000 to 11,700 years). They determined this by analyzing animal figurines carved from driftwood, which the father and colleagues of Karlstom uncovered in a cave called the Stanton cave in the 1960s, according to the press release. With techniques available at the time, researchers went out with driftwood and found that it was over 35,000 years old. (The figurines themselves have been sculpted between 3,000 and 4,000 years.)
Stanton’s cave is at 150 feet (46 meters) above the river level, so the water must have increased to place driftwood – but the reason has remained unknown. “This would have required a level of flooding of ten times larger than any flood that has occurred in the past thousand years,” said Karlstrom.
“Rare and unusual occurrences”
Subsequent analyzes using more advanced techniques have suggested that driftwood was 43,500 years old, and the new study pushed the date even further, to 56,000 years. Dating from driftwood was a crucial step to understand how it arrived at Stanton’s cave in the first place, said Karlstrom.
But the researchers needed more evidence to complete the puzzle, so they searched similar caves in the region. “According to many research trips, Karl and I knew other accessible high caves that had both driftwood and sediments that could be dated”, co-author of the study Laura CrosseyAlso professor of land and planetary sciences at the University of New Mexico, said in the press release.
Several laboratories have examined the additional driftwood samples, and all returned with dates compatible with a flood event 56,000 years ago. The locations of the caves underlined this event being a landslide near Nankowap Canyon, which is downstream of the Stanton cave. The landslide may have been so large that it created a dam on the Colorado river, forming a lake which extended upstream kilometers. As a result, water levels may have increased high enough to place driftwood in the caves, depending on the press release.
Almost at the same time as these results appeared, co-author of the study David aroundMain scientist of the Lunar and Planetary Institute of Houston, recalled the age of the barringer crater. Kring’s work has shown that the impact of meteors occurred about 56,000 years ago, according to the press release.
Kring had previously calculated That the impact of Barringer Meteor sparked an earthquake of magnitude 5,4, and when the researchers gathered to work on the new study, he determined that the residual effect of the Grand Canyon would have been the same as an earthquake of 3.5 magnitude. It could have been enough to disintegrate a cliff, according to the declaration.
“The team gathered these arguments without claiming that we have final proof,” said Karlstrom. “Nevertheless, the impact of the meteorite, the massive landslide, the lake deposits and the floated wood above the river level are all rare and unusual events.”
With dates that all converge about 56,000 years ago, it seems credible to make events linked, he said.
