Scientists discovered huge asteroid crater at bottom of Atlantic Ocean

By Alimat Aliyeva

An international team of scientists from the UK, USA and Germany has obtained 3D images of an asteroid crater located at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa, Azernews reports.

It was noted that the crater with a diameter of about nine kilometers is the result of the fall of a large meteorite about 66 million years ago.

Scientists said that the diameter of the meteorite was about 450-500 meters. He fell to the Ground at a slight angle at a speed of 72 thousand kilometers per hour.

According to experts, the new data allowed us to recreate the picture of the first minutes after the asteroid hit.

The energy of the explosion melted the rocks and created a debris field with an area of thousands of square kilometers. This cataclysm also caused an 800-meter tsunami that crossed the Atlantic Ocean.

The researchers noted that the crater formed at about the same time as the 180-kilometer-long Chicxulub crater off the coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Chikhulub was formed after a 10-kilometer meteorite collided with the Earth, which led to the extinction of dinosaurs and most forms of life on Earth.

Before that, scientists had discovered the reason for the formation of craters in the eternal glacier on Yamal.