Relief Map, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

This shaded relief image of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula show a subtle, but unmistakable, indication of the Chicxulub impact crater. Most scientists now agree that this impact was the cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction, the event 65 million years ago that marked the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs as well as the majority of life then on Earth.

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Image Courtesy SRTM Team NASA/JPL/NIMA

Published March 7, 2003

Source:

Space Shuttle > SRTM