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Giant underwater avalanche decimated Atlantic seafloor 60k years ago
Researchers have mapped the path of a giant submarine avalanche that tore through the Agadir Canyon — a deep trench in the Atlantic seafloor off the coast of Morocco — 60,000 years ago.
A wave of mud, rocks and sand measuring 660 feet (200 meters) tall came crashing down through the canyon at speeds of 40 mph (65 km/h), "ripping out the seafloor and tearing everything out in its way," study co-lead author Christopher Stevenson, a sedimentologist and lecturer at the University of Liverpool in the U.K., said in a statement. That's a huge growth factor compared with snow avalanches and debris flows on land, which grow four to eight times in size from start to end, co-lead author Christoph Böttner, a Marie-Curie researcher in geophysics and geology at Aarhus University in Denmark, said in the statement. "These findings are of enormous importance for how we try and assess their potential geohazard risk to seafloor infrastructure," study co-author Sebastian Krastel, a professor of marine geophysics and hydroacoustics at Kiel University in Germany, said in the statement.
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