The Late Cretaceous Terrestrial Impact Record

"The Wetumpka Impact Crater And The Late Cretaceous Impact Record"

(from D.T. King, Jr.,in Neathery et al., 1997)

The following figure shows spatial distribution of Late Cretaceous impacts, continents, and epicontinental seas during Late Cretaceous (specifically Santonian; 85 Ma). Regional paleogeography shows that all nine Late Cretaceous impact craters (currently known and listed in Table 1) are located in Earth's northern hemisphere, and further, all are boxed within an area approximately 40 degrees latitude by 125 degrees longitude. There is a bias towards discovery of northern-hemisphere impact craters mainly because there are high levels of exploratory activities in most northern-hemisphere nations (Grieve and Shoemaker, 1994), but Late Cretaceous epicontinental sea distribution may have been a factor as well. However, total absence of late Cretaceous southern-hemisphere impact craters is puzzling and not expected.