is an impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.[4] Its center is located near the town of Chicxulub, after which the crater is named.[5] It was formed by a large asteroid or comet about 11 to 81 kilometres (6.8 to 50.3 miles) in diameter,[2] the Chicxulub impactor, striking the Earth. The date of the impact coincides precisely with the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary), slightly less than 66 million years ago,[3] and a widely accepted theory is that worldwide climate disruption from the event was the cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, a mass extinction in which 75% of plant and animal species on Earth became extinct, including all non-avian dinosaurs.
