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Uisdean Nicholson and his team have discovered evidence in seismic data of a 40-kilometer-wide subsurface crater beneath nearly a kilometer of water off the coast of West Africa that is consistent with a 400-meter-wide asteroid striking the seafloor. This structure, which the team named Nadir, exhibits all the telltale signs of a high-velocity impact crater: an elevated rim, a circular shape, a terraced floor, and a pronounced area of uplift at its center.
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Both carbonate dissolution and subsurface salt withdrawal can cause craterlike depressions without the need for a high-velocity impact. However, carbonate dissolution is very unlikely to have occurred in the vicinity of Nadir, and although subsurface salt withdrawal could have plausibly occurred in this area and would result in a depression with a terraced floor or a circular shape, it would not exhibit the area of central uplift seen at Nadir.
Uisdean Nicholson and his team have discovered evidence in seismic data of a 40-kilometer-wide subsurface crater beneath nearly a kilometer of water off the coast of West Africa that is consistent with a 400-meter-wide asteroid striking the seafloor. This structure, which the team named Nadir, exhibits all the telltale signs of a high-velocity impact crater: an elevated rim, a circular shape, a terraced floor, and a pronounced area of uplift at its center.
Text 2
Both carbonate dissolution and subsurface salt withdrawal can cause craterlike depressions without the need for a high-velocity impact. However, carbonate dissolution is very unlikely to have occurred in the vicinity of Nadir, and although subsurface salt withdrawal could have plausibly occurred in this area and would result in a depression with a terraced floor or a circular shape, it would not exhibit the area of central uplift seen at Nadir.