AN ASTEROID impact 65 million years ago set off massive submarine landslides
that sent tidal waves racing across the Atlantic.
Dick Norris of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts told a
meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver last week that the impact
on the Yucat谩n peninsula in Central America triggered an earthquake that
shook soft sediments along the continental slopes. Norris found a layer of
shallow-water sediments in deep water all along the US鈥檚 Atlantic coast and off
Spain, indicating that the landslides had been simultaneous. 鈥淭he slope
collapses would have left some whopping big tsunamis sloshing back and forth in
the Atlantic,鈥� he says.