The Chicxulub crater lies buried beneath the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, named after the nearby community of Chicxulub Pueblo. It formed slightly over 66 million years ago when an asteroid about ten kilometres across struck Earth. The crater is roughly 200 kilometres wide and is covered by about a kilometre of younger sedimentary rock. It is one of the largest impact structures on Earth and the only one with an intact, directly accessible peak ring for research. Its discovery came from geophysicists Antonio Camargo and Glen Penfield, who were looking for oil in the late 1970s. Evidence for the impact includes shocked quartz, a gravity anomaly and tektites in surrounding areas. The impact coincides with the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, when roughly 75 per cent of species, including all non-avian dinosaurs, died out.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.