A group of archaeologists found evidence of a super-magnitude earthquake which was the most powerful earthquake in human history. A new study featured in Science Advances says that Chile's newly discovered massive earthquake occurred about 3,800 years ago.
The quake was so terrible that it left the nearby coastline abandoned for nearly 1,000 years. Researchers said the large earthquake was caused by large cracks that lifted the coastline in the area.
It happened in what is now northern Chile. However, Chile's massive earthquake not only shook the ground in the area, it created a huge tsunami with waves as high as 20 meters.
Researchers believe that the tsunami caused by Chile's massive earthquake spread as far as New Zealand, nearly 6,000 miles from its point of origin. The tsunami waves were so strong they threw beach rocks the size of a car hundreds of miles inland.
Quoted from BGR, this newly discovered earthquake beat the record for the largest earthquake ever recorded before, the Valdivia earthquake which was also located in Chile in 1960. At that time, records recorded a large earthquake in southern Chile measuring up to 9.6 magnitude. The Valdivia earthquake killed up to 6,000 people and sent a tsunami across the Pacific Ocean.
By comparison, researchers believe Chile's newly discovered massive earthquake was a magnitude 9.5. The crack it created was roughly 620 miles long, compared to the 500-mile crack created by the Valdivia earthquake.
James Goff, study co-author and geologist at the University of Southampton in England said no one believed an earthquake of this magnitude was possible in the north of the country. Now, however, Goff says they have evidence that a major Chilean earthquake occurred thousands of years ago.
"The Atacama Desert is one of the driest and most inhospitable environments in the world and finding evidence of a tsunami is always difficult," explains Goff.
"However, we found evidence of marine sediments and many wild animals that would have lived quietly at sea before being dumped ashore. And we found all of this so high up and deep inland that it couldn't have been a hurricane that put them there."
Coincidentally, before joining the research, Goff was in New Zealand, on Chatham Island. There, he studied a large number of boulders that appeared to have been flung hundreds of miles inland.
Goff said they determined a major Chile earthquake of at least a magnitude of 9.5 had moved boulders. But they have no proof. With this new finding, researchers have found evidence that this massive earthquake did exist.
Chile's massive earthquake drove residents away from the coast. Meanwhile, the affected islands in the South Pacific were uninhabited at that time. Today, the islands are popular tourist sites and many people flock there.
This means that a tsunami or earthquake that hits the area can be a major disaster. Therefore, Goff hopes they can learn more from these findings if something like this happens again.