Chicxulub Pueblo
Town in the Mexican state of Yucatán
Chicxulub Pueblo (Yucatec Maya: Ch’ik Xulub, Mayan pronunciation: [t͡ʃʼik ʃuluɓ]) is a town, and surrounding municipality of the same name, in the Mexican state of Yucatán.
At the census of 2010, the town had a population of 4,080 people.
Chicxulub is most famous for being near the geographic center of the Chicxulub crater, an impact crater discovered by geologists on the Yucatán Peninsula and extending into the ocean. It was created by the impact some 66 million years ago of the Chicxulub impactor, an asteroid or comet which caused the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, which led to the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs and other animals that dominated the Mesozoic. The coastal village (or puerto) of Chicxulub, in the neighboring municipality of Progreso, lies almost exactly on the geographic center of the crater.
The name Chicxulub is from the Yucatec Maya language. There is a small debate about the meaning of the name of the town. It may come from ch'íik xulub, which could mean "place of the sharp horn," or "place where the devil fell," or it may come from ch'ik xulub, which is "the devil's flea."
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Chicxulub Pueblo”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Chicxulub Pueblo, Yucatán (04).JPG by Inri, CC0
- Chicxulub Wharf Yucatan Mexico.jpg by LawrieM, CC BY-SA 4.0
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