Highly expanded Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary section from the Chicxulub peak ring, recovered by International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP)–International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) Expedition 364, provides an unprecedented window into the immediate aftermath of the impact. Site M0077 includes ∼130 m of impact melt rock and suevite deposited the first day of the Cenozoic covered by <1 m of micrite-rich carbonate deposited over subsequent weeks to years. We present an interpreted series of events based on analyses of these drill cores. Within minutes of the impact, centrally uplifted basement rock collapsed outward to form a peak ring capped in melt rock. Within tens of minutes, the peak ring was covered in ∼40 m of brecciated impact melt rock and coarse-grained suevite, including clasts possibly generated by melt–water interactions during ocean resurge. Within an hour, resurge crested the peak ring, depositing a 10-m-thick layer of suevite with increased particle roundness and sorting. Within hours, the full resurge deposit formed through settling and seiches, resulting in an 80-m-thick fining-upward, sorted suevite in the flooded crater. Within a day, the reflected rim-wave tsunami reached the crater, depositing a cross-bedded sand-to-fine gravel layer enriched in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons overlain by charcoal fragments. Generation of a deep crater open to the ocean allowed rapid flooding and sediment accumulation rates among the highest known in the geologic record. The high-resolution section provides insight into the impact environmental effects, including charcoal as evidence for impact-induced wildfires and a paucity of sulfur-rich evaporites from the target supporting rapid global cooling and darkness as extinction mechanisms.
Abstract-El'gygytgyn is a 18 km diameter, 3.6 Ma old impact crater in NE Siberia. International Continental Scientific Drilling Program-El'gygytgyn hole 1C was drilled on the frozen crater lake, 2.3 km from the crater center to a final depth of 517 m below the lake floor. Petrographic and geochemical analyses of 26 drill core samples, three impact melt rocks from the surface, and seven glass spherules from surface deposits outside the crater are used to characterize the impactite inventory at El'gygytgyn. The bottom 98 m of hole 1C intersected monomict brecciated, unshocked, rhyolitic ignimbrite with minor intercalations of polymict breccia and mafic inclusions. These lithologies are overlain by 89 m of polymict breccia whose components occasionally exhibit scarce, low-degree shock metamorphic features. This unit is succeeded by 10 m of suevite that contains about 1 vol% glassy impact melt shards <1 cm in size and a low amount of shock metamorphosed lithic clasts. The suevite is capped by a reworked fallout deposit that constitutes a transition over 4 m into lacustrine sedimentation. A higher abundance of shock metamorphosed lithic clasts, and glass spherules, some with Ni-rich spinel and admixture of an ultramafic component, characterize this unit. We tentatively interpret this impactite section as allochthonous breccia in the vicinity of El'gygytgyn's central ring uplift. The geochemical compositions of seven glass spherules from terrace deposits 2 km outside the crater and eight spherules from the reworked fallout deposit in hole 1C show far greater variability than the composition of impact melt shards and impact melt rocks. Some of these spherules also show strong enrichments in siderophile elements.
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