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Science 29 July 1988:
Vol. 241. no. 4865, pp. 567 - 570
DOI: 10.1126/science.241.4865.567
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Articles

A Tsunami Deposit at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary in Texas

JOANNE BOURGEOIS 1, THOR A. HANSEN 2, PATRICIA L. WIBERG 1, and ERLE G. KAUFFMAN 3

1 Department of Geological Sciences, AJ-20, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195.
2 Department of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225.
3 Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309.

At sites near the Brazos River, Texas, an iridium anomaly and the paleontologic Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary directly overlie a sandstone bed in which coarse-grained sandstone with large clasts of mudstone and reworked carbonate nodules grades upward to wave ripple-laminated, very fine grained sandstone. This bed is the only sandstone bed in a sequence of uppermost Cretaceous to lowermost Paleocene mudstone that records about 1 million years of quiet water deposition in midshelf to outer shelf depths. Conditions for depositing such a sandstone layer at these depths are most consistent with the occurrence of a tsunami about 50 to 100 meters high. The most likely source for such a tsunami at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary is a bolidewater impact.

Submitted on May 23, 1988
Accepted on July 6, 1988


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)