![]() ![]() Little blue crabs scuttled through its grasses. ![]() It flooded and overflowed, expanding its borders, mingling freshwater and seawater, filling up with creatures of all kinds: oysters, fishes, turtles, dolphins, otters, pelicans, newts. The ancient crater sucked down streams like a shower drain. The glaciers bled ice water, and little trickles went rolling downhill, braiding themselves into rivers, seeking low places in the landscape.Įventually, inevitably, the water found the asteroid hole. Glaciers started crawling down from the north, with irresistible slowness, inching their way toward the asteroid hole, grinding up the landscape, dragging boulders and carving valleys. Where it hit, the rock left a scar: a giant smoldering hole more than 50 miles across.Įons passed. You can still find remnants of the trauma (shocked quartz, fused glass) as far away as Texas and the Caribbean. It incinerated whole forests, killed all life in the area, sent super-tsunamis ripping out across the Atlantic. It hit so hard that it vaporized itself and cracked the bedrock seven miles down. The asteroid hit with the power of many nuclear bombs. It struck the eastern edge of the landmass we know today as North America. Thirty-five million years ago, a giant space rock, two miles wide, came screaming out of the sky and crashed into Earth. Ok, why not, let’s start with the asteroid. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. ![]()
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