Adriana Ocampo has led six research expeditions to study what geological formation that is more than 180 km in diameter and 20 km in depth
Chicxulub crater The Chicxulub crater ( ; ] ) is an impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Its center is located near the town of Chicxulub, after which the crater is named. It was formed by a large asteroid or comet about 10 to 15 kilometres (6 to 9 miles) in diameter, the Chicxulub impactor, striking the Earth. The date of the impact coincides precisely with the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary), slightly less than 66 million years ago, and a widely accepted theory is that worldwide climate disruption from the event was the cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, a mass extinction in which 75% of plant and animal species on Earth suddenly became extinct, including all non-avian dinosaurs. The crater is more than 180 km in diameter and 20 km in depth, well into the continental crust of the region of about 10–30 km depth. It makes the feature the third of the largest confirmed impact structures on Earth.
Large low-shear-velocity provinces Large low-shear-velocity provinces, LLSVPs, also called superplumes, are characteristic structures of parts of the lowermost mantle (the region surrounding the outer core) of the Earth. These provinces are characterized by slow shear wave velocities and were discovered by seismic tomography of the deep Earth. There are two main provinces: the African LLSVP and the Pacific LLSVP. Both extend laterally for thousands of kilometers and possibly up to 1000 km vertically from the core-mantle boundary. The Pacific LLSVP has specific dimensions of 3000 km across and 300 m higher than the surrounding ocean-floor, and is situated over four hotspots that suggest multiple mantle plumes underneath. These zones represent around 3% of the volume of the Earth. Other names for LLSVPs include "superwells", "thermo-chemical piles", or "hidden reservoirs". Some of these names, however, are more interpretive of their geodynamical or geochemical effects, while many questions remain about their nature.