When the dinosaur-killing asteroid collided with Earth more than 65 million years ago, it did not go gently into that good night. Rather, it blasted a nearly mile-high tsunami through the Gulf of Mexico that caused chaos throughout the world’s oceans, new research finds.

The 9-mile-across (14 kilometers) space rock, known as the Chicxulub asteroid, caused so much destruction, it’s no wonder the asteroid ended the dinosaur age, leading to the so-called Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction.

“The Chicxulub asteroid resulted in a huge global tsunami, the likes of which have not been seen in modern history,” said lead researcher Molly Range, who did the research while getting her master’s degree in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan. [Image Gallery: Ancient Monsters of the Sea]

Range and her colleagues presented the research, which has…