This is the closest surface exposure of ejecta to the Chicxulub crater that has yet been found and the best example known on Earth from a really big impact crater. The impact 65 million years ago kicked up a global cloud of dust and sulfur gases that blocked sunlight from penetrating through the atmosphere and sent Earth into a decade of near-freezing temperatures. The drop in temperature and related environmental effects are thought to have brought about the demise of the dinosaurs and about 75 percent of the other species on Earth. Chicxulub is the only impact event that has been correlated with mass extinctions to date. This Belize site contains tiny spheres of altered green glass, called tektites.
Tektites are rocks that have been melted to glass by the severe heat of an impact.
Expedition member Jan Smit of Free University, Amsterdam, noted that the Belize tektites were similar to those found in Haiti and northern Mexico. This finding links the stratigraphy of the Belize sites to the more distant Caribbean and Mexican ejecta sites. They also collected fossils from the site to help date the deposits and add new pieces to the puzzle of what happened at Chicxulub 65 million years ago. Impact ejecta is very rare on Earth, but covers much of the surface of Mars because Mars' surface has remained stable and unchanged for billions of years, thus preserving debris from these rare impact events. Also, such fluidized ejecta lobes have never been observed directly on Earth before and can serve as an excellent laboratory for studying the ejecta lobes surrounding many Martian craters.