Impacts have played an important role in shaping the natural history of the Earth. While impacts are rare events in human history, they remain a potential hazard to life on Earth. Individual twentieth century impact events on Earth are known to have caused damage ranging from minor personal injury to the devastation of a vast area of Siberian forest in the so-called "Tunguska Event." The 1994 impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on the planet Jupiter vividly illustrated the potentially immense destructive power of these events.Other related USGS websites: Flagstaff Field Center - Planetary Geology
Description: A spectacular geological event took place on the Atlantic margin of North America about 35 million years ago in the late part of the Eocene Epoch. Sea level was unusually high everywhere on Earth, and the ancient shoreline of the Virginia region was somewhere in the vicinity of where Richmond is today. Tropical rain forests covered the slopes of the Appalachians. To the east of a narrow coastal plain, a broad, lime (calcium carbonate)-covered continental shelf lay beneath the ocean. Suddenly, with an intense flash of light, that tranquil scene was transformed into a hellish cauldron of mass destruction. From the far reaches of space, a bolide (comet or asteroid), 3-5 kilometers in diameter, swooped through the Earth's atmosphere and blasted an enormous crater into the continental shelf. The crater is now approximately 200 km southeast of Washington, D.C., and is buried 300-500 meters beneath the southern part of Chesapeake Bay and the peninsulas of southeastern Virginia. updated: 2004-03-02 pages include:
Description: The story of the Chesapeake Bay Bolide, a meteor that hit the earth and formed a crater that is now buried under the mouth of Chesapeake Bay; how it was originally discovered, its effects on the landscape, and its importance to the groundwater supply and to engineering planning in the Norfolk area of Virginia and the lower Delmarva peninsula. updated: 1997-07-24 pages include:
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U. S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
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