Asteroids, dinosaurs and cenotes.
The Chicxulub impactor , a large asteroid (10-15km in diameter) , struck the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, triggering the extinction of the dinosaurs and creating the Chicxulub crater. The crater's rim is marked by a ring of cenotes, which are sinkholes formed as groundwater dissolved the limestone bedrock. And the dinosaurs? The energy released from the impact would have been equivalent 100 trillion tons of TNT, more than a billion times the energy of any man-made bomb (for comparison, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs were 15 and 20 Kilotons). This led to a chain of catastrophic events that led to the extinction of three-quarters of animal and plant species on the planet. Cenotes are amazing, millions of years old, with fabulous stalactites and stalagmites, they can have their own eco system and fish, which is a bit weird and I'm not sure they are completely au fait with my no-touch water creatures/humans policy. The Yucatan p...