A long-lived impact-generated hydrothermal system at the Chicxulub impact structure
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Hydrothermal systems likely played an essential role in the origin of life, both on Earth and potentially on other planets. They form anywhere that heat and aqueous fluids interact, including within cooling hypervelocity impact craters. Longer periods of hydrothermal activity will generate extended windows of opportunity for prebiotic chemical reactions to occur, life to develop, and micro-organisms to thrive and propagate beyond their point of origin. Here, we present radioisotopic age constraints and numerical simulations for the duration of post-impact hydrothermal activity in and around the peak ring of the ~200 km diameter 66 Ma Chicxulub impact structure. We find that hydrothermal activity persisted for at least 8 million years (Myr), which is approximately four times longer than previously estimated by numerical simulations, palaeomagnetic records, and petrographic interpretations at Chicxulub, making it the longest-lived impact generated hydrothermal system documented on Earth.
Date Issued
2026-06-09
Date Acceptance
2026-05-01
Citation
Communications Earth & Environment, 2026, 7
ISSN
2662-4435
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Communications Earth & Environment
Volume
7
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2026 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/42282941
PII: 3618
Subjects
Astrobiology
Geochemistry
Geology
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Article Number
470
Date Publish Online
2026-06-09