RESUMEN
(40)Ar/(39)Ar dating of drill core samples of a glassy melt rock recovered from beneath a massive impact breccia contained within the 180-kilometer subsurface Chicxulub crater in Yucatán, Mexico, has yielded well-behaved incremental heating spectra with a mean plateau age of 64.98 +/- 0.05 million years ago (Ma). The glassy melt rock of andesitic composition was obtained from core 9 (1390 to 1393 meters) in the Chicxulub 1 well. The age of the melt rock is virtually indistinguishable from (40)Ar/(39)Ar ages obtained on tektite glass from Beloc, Haiti, and Arroyo el Mimbral, northeastern Mexico, of 65.01 +/- 0.08 Ma (mean plateau age for Beloc) and 65.07 +/- 0.10 Ma (mean total fusion age for both sites). The (40)Ar/(39)Ar ages, in conjunction with geochemical and petrological similarities, strengthen the recent suggestion that the Chicxulub structure is the source for the Haitian and Mexican tektites and is a viable candidate for the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary impact site.
RESUMEN
The marker bed at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary of the Beloc Formation (southern Haiti) contains abundant coarse-grained microtektites and minor amounts of shocked quartz grains in the basal part. The upper part is composed of medium-grained marl with amalgamated microtektite lenses and finer-grained marl lenses disseminated throughout. Field and petrographic observations, and the distribution of planktonic foraminifera suggest that the bed formed from a complex sequence of events. A bolide impact nearby produced microtektites that sett1led to form a nearly pure layer at the base. Vaporized materials with anomalously high extraterrestrial components settled last, along with carbonate sediments. The entire bed became sparsely consolidated. Subsequently, another major disruptive event, perhaps a giant tsunami, partly reworked the initial deposit. Cohesive fragments of the original marker bed mixed with exotic materials were redeposited as lenticular bodies. This process also may have caused further mixing of Cretaceous and Tertiary microfossils, as observed at Beloc and elsewhere.