A crater at Chicxulub and its impact on the end Cretaceousa are the subject of a new study. The Cretaceous crater is revisited in a new report published Friday with funding in part from the National Science Foundation.

Did a space rock’s crashing into the earth cause the Chicxulub crater 65 million years ago?

Yes, says the new study.

“We felt it important to present the wealth of data now available about the remarkable and exact correlation between the impact in the Yucatan and the extinction event at the K-Pg boundary,” says geophysicist Sean Gulick.

Marine geologist Tim Bralower writes:

“The impact event triggered tsunami many times the size of the wave that hit the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26, 2004. These waves caused massive destruction on the sea floor, with the multiple sediment layers representing the deposition of impact-derived material, mixed with sand and silt, by waves and currents over periods of days after the impact. As the energy levels gradually decreased, the materials settling down gradually became finer.”

Greg Ravizza adds:

“Reports of multiple horizons with elevated iridium concentrations fairly close to the Chicxulub crater have led to a lot of confusion, and suggestions of multiple impacts. A key point that cannot be ignored is that data from several sites far away from the Chicxulub crater provide no evidence of multiple large impacts. This observation lends very strong support to the careful stratigraphic synthesis in our paper demonstrating the very complex, and frequently disturbed, character of the sections closest to the Chicxulub crater.”

Another adds:

“The precise correlation of this huge impact crater with a worldwide layer of impact debris–one that lies directly above the extinction level of both marine and land animals and plants–is one of the most phenomenal discoveries in Earth history. The science is complex, but the story is simple: a single asteroid impact caused global extinctions at the K-Pg boundary.”