THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Tuesday, September 12, 1995            TAG: 9509120301
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                         LENGTH: Short :   42 lines

EVIDENCE APPEARS TO CLINCH THEORY OF BAY METEOR

Scientists presented compelling new evidence Monday that a giant meteor slammed into the Earth 35 million years ago on the spot we now call the lower Chesapeake Bay. The event may not only explain part of the topography of the mid-Atlantic region but possibly the origins of the Bay itself.

People in the region appear to be living atop the remains of one of the great cataclysms in the planet's history. The impact was not as big as the one 65 million years ago in Mexico that apparently wiped out the dinosaurs, but it was many times more powerful than if all the nuclear weapons on Earth exploded at once. The meteor apparently hit a spot then under the ocean more than 140 miles southeast of Washington.

``If it happened today,'' said Christian Koeberl, a scientist at the University of Vienna who is studying rocks from the impact, ``Washington would probably cease to exist.'' Koeberl was one of a group of scientists who presented the new evidence Monday at a meeting at the Smithsonian Institution.

The meteor, at least a mile in diameter, would have traveled through the Earth's atmosphere in less than five seconds, barely slowing. It almost certainly vaporized on impact and melted part of the Earth's crust, sending hot jets of gas and molten rock shooting miles into the upper atmosphere.

Led by C. Wylie Poag of the U.S. Geological Survey, scientists have been gathering evidence for several years that a 55-mile-wide meteor crater underlies the lower Chesapeake Bay and the nearby sea floor.

The evidence presented Monday all but clinches the case. Using samples drilled from deep underground and soundings of rock layers not unlike a sonogram of a baby in the womb, Poag has mapped the crater in some detail. It is centered on the town of Cape Charles, near the lower tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, and extends well offshore. by CNB