An impact crater in India suggests a meteor strike there may
have killed off the dinosaurs. Off the west coast of India,
there is a suspicious basin called Shiva. It forms a rough ring
over 500 kilometers (311 miles) in diameter and has a central
underwater peak the size of Mt. McKinley. Where it sweeps on
shore, the land appears shattered and riddled with faults and
geothermal hot springs. If Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech
University is right, Shiva is the largest impact crater on the
planet, the scar leftover from a cataclysm that had a hand in
killing the dinosaurs. The basin is a bonanza of oil and gas
resources, and energy companies have been drilling in it for
decades. Information on its rocks has trickled out slowly from
company vaults, but Chatterjee has kept close tabs, suspecting
for years that the region has a dramatic story to tell about a
long-lost cosmic catastrophe. So far the evidence he has
assembled is mostly circumstantial. The bedrock that lines Shiva
is rife with mantle rocks, as though