The Chicxulub Crater is an ancient impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula, with its center located near the town of Chicxulub, Yucatán, Mexico. The crater is over 180 kilometers (110 mi) in diameter, making the feature one of the largest confirmed impact structures in the world; the asteroid or comet whose impact formed the crater was at least 10 km (6 mi) in diameter. The crater was named for the nearby town, as well as for the literal Maya translation of the name: "tail of the devil." The crater was discovered by Glen Penfield, a geophysicist who had been working in the Yucatán while looking for oil during the late 1970s. The presence of tektites, shocked quartz and gravity anomalies, as well as the age of the rocks and isotope analysis, show that this impact structure dates from the late Cretaceous Period, roughly 65 million years ago. The impact associated with the crater is implicated in causing the extinction of the dinosaurs as suggested by the K–T boundary, although some critics disagree that the impact was the sole reason and also debate whether there was a single impact or whether the Chicxulub impactor was one of several that may have struck the Earth at around the same time. Recent evidence suggests that the impactor was a piece of a much larger asteroid which broke up in a collision more than 160 million years ago.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_Crater

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1815: War of 1812: American forces led by General Andrew Jackson defeated the British army at the Battle of New Orleans near New Orleans, two weeks after the United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent to end the war. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_New_Orleans)

1889: Statistician Herman Hollerith received a patent for his electric tabulating machine. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Hollerith)

1956: Operation Auca: Five Evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States were killed by the Huaorani in the rainforest of Ecuador shortly after making contact with them. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Auca)

1989: Kegworth air disaster: British Midland Flight 092 crashed onto the embankment of the M1 motorway near Kegworth, Leicestershire, UK, killing 47 people and injuring 79 others. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_air_disaster)

2004: RMS Queen Mary 2, at the time the longest, widest and tallest passenger ship ever built, was christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Queen_Mary_2)

_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:

hinder: To keep back; to delay or impede. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hinder)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

If you cannot make knowledge your servant, make it your friend. -- Baltasar Gracián (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Baltasar_Graci%C3%A1n)