Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10553/70100
Title: An extreme wave event in eastern Yucatán, Mexico: Evidence of a palaeotsunami event during the Mayan times
Authors: Lario, Javier
Spencer, Chris
Bardají, Teresa
Marchante Ortega, Angel 
Garduño-monroy, Victor H.
Macias, Jorge
Ortega, Sergio
Keywords: Boulders
Extreme Wave Event
Palaeoseismology
Tsunami
Issue Date: 2019
Journal: Sedimentology 
Abstract: The Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, has typically been considered a tectonically stable region with little significant seismic activity. The region though, is one that is regularly affected by hurricanes. A detailed survey of ca 100 km of the eastern Yucatan and Cozumel coast identified the presence of ridges containing individual boulders measuring >1 m in length. The boulder ridges reach 5 m in height and their origin is associated with extreme wave event activity. Previously modelled tsunami waves from known seismically active zones in the region (Muertos Thrust Belt and South Caribbean Deformed Belt) are not of sufficient scale in the area of the Yucatan Peninsula to have produced the boulder ridges recorded in this study. The occurrence of hurricanes in this region is more common, but two of the most destructive (Hurricane Gilbert 1988 and Hurricane Wilma 2005) produced coastal waves too small to have created the ridges recorded here. In this paper, a new tsunami model with a source area located on the Motagua/Swan Island Fault System has been generated that indicates a tsunami event may have caused the extreme wave events that resulted in the deposition of the boulder ridges.
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10553/70100
ISSN: 0037-0746
DOI: 10.1111/sed.12662
Source: Sedimentology [ISSN 0037-0746], (2019)
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