13/07/2025
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago didn’t just cause mass extinctions—it unleashed a global tsunami of apocalyptic scale.
A 2022 study revealed that this massive wave reached heights of up to 2.8 miles (4.5 km) in the Gulf of Mexico and swept across the globe, disturbing seafloor sediments as far as New Zealand, 12,000 km from the impact site.
The impactor, roughly 14 km wide and traveling at 43,500 km/h, struck Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, forming the Chicxulub crater. Just minutes later, it triggered a mega-tsunami with an energy output 30,000 times greater than the deadly 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Simulations show that within hours, waves surged out of the Gulf, raced through the Atlantic and Pacific, and reached nearly every coastline within two days.
In addition to the tsunami, the collision released a global cloud of soot and dust, igniting wildfires, acid rain, and a prolonged “impact winter” that ended the reign of the dinosaurs.
Outcrops in New Zealand, once thought to be tectonic, were instead traced to this tsunami, providing direct geological evidence of its global scale. As the study notes, “no historically documented tsunamis come close to matching this event.”
RESEARCH PAPER 📄
Molly M. Range et al., “The Chicxulub Impact Produced a Powerful Global Tsunami”, AGU Advances (2022)
