A huge crater has been discovered hundreds of feet beneaththe
floor of the North Sea by seismic mapping equipmentdesigned for
petroleum exploration. The 12-mile-wide crater,called Silverpit,
is 60 to 65 million years old, going backto the end of the
dinosaur era, and was created by theimpact of a massive
meteorite. This means that not just one,but two, impacts killed
off the dinosaurs. Seismic readings in the area were made in
1992, whileBritish Petroleum was mapping petroleum resources in
theNorth Sea. Phil Allen, a geophysicist at
ProductionGeoscience, noticed them last year. "Phil was mapping
deeperstuff in search of gas fields as usual, but noticed
theuncharacteristically bu"py nature of the top Cretaceous inthe
east of the survey,? says BP geologist Simon Stewart,who is
working with Allen. When Allen asked the computer to produce an
overview of thearea, ?the dramatic rings around the central
crater are whatpopped out,? Stewart says. The 12-mile-wide
structurebaffled Allen, so he put a picture of the crat