Turkey's crisis center said about 100 other people were injured in the quake, which hit at 4:32 a.m. (0232 GMT, 9 p.m. EST Sunday) in Elazig province, about 340 miles (550 kilometers) east of Ankara, the capital.

The earthquake, which caught many people as they slept, was centered near the village of Basyurt and followed by more than 50 aftershocks, the strongest measuring 5.5 and 5.3, the Kandilli seismology center said. (YAHOO )

The mini-cyclone which smashed into the regional capital with winds of up to 100 kilometres (62 miles) an hour was an event which had likely not been seen since early last century, Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Kevin Parkyn said.

Some believe they were killed off by massive volcanoes , others that they were a victim of prehistoric climate change.

Now a major study claims to have conclusive proof that dinosaurs were wiped out within weeks of an asteroid the size of the Isle of Wight slamming into the Earth.

Researchers say the impact sent a vast flume of dust into the atmosphere 65 million years ago, unleashed a torrent of powerful earthquakes and triggered forest fires across North America, blocking out the sun and wiping out half of all species.

The panel of 41 international experts - including British researchers from Cambridge, Imperial College and the University of London - looked at 20 years of research to settle the long-running debate about what killed the dinosaurs.

The mass extinction event also wiped out the bird-like pterosaurs and the large marine reptiles - clearing the way for mammals to become the dominant species on Earth.

Just 50 miles off the Pacific Northwest coast is an earthquake hot spot that threatens to unleash on Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, British Columbia, the kind of damage that has shattered Chile.

The fault has been dormant for more than 300 years, but when it awakens - today or decades from now - the consequences could be devastating.

Recent computer simulations of a hypothetical magnitude-9 quake found that shaking could last two to five minutes - strong enough to potentially cause poorly constructed buildings from British Columbia to Northern California to collapse and severely damage highways and bridges.

Such a quake also would send powerful tsunami waves rushing to shore in minutes. While big cities such as Portland and Seattle would be protected from severe flooding, low-lying seaside communities may not be as lucky.

The earthquake that struck Chile on Saturday may have shifted the Earth's axis and created shorter days, according to scientists at Nasa. Richard Gross, a geophysicist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said the 8.8 magnitude quake could have moved the Earth's axis by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8cm) – enough to shorten a day by about 1.26 microseconds.

A large quake can shift huge amounts of rock and alter the distribution of mass on the planet. When that distribution changes, it changes the rate at which the planet rotates, which determines the length of a day.

"The length of the day should have got shorter by 1.26 microseconds," Gross told the Bloomberg news agency. "The axis about which the Earth's mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds."

Gross previously used the technique to estimate the shift caused by the 2004 Sumatran quake that caused the Indian Ocean tsunami. That 9.1 magnitude quake shifted the Earth's axis by 2.3 milliarcseconds and shortened a day by 6.8 microseconds.

Although just a few weeks separated the Haiti and Chile earthquakes, scientists say the two disasters are unlikely to be linked.

While the sort of 8.8 magnitude quake that struck South America at the weekend is an annual event, the sort of magnitude 7 quake that hit Haiti was common - occurring somewhere in the world once a week.

Despite the speculation of some geologists, there is no hard evidence to link earthquakes that occur thousands of miles and several weeks apart, according to Prof John McCloskey, a geologist at the University of Ulster.

It is fortunate that one of the biggest earthquakes in recent history has generated only relatively small tsunamis that crossed the Pacific Ocean from Chile to Japan.

This is almost certainly because the rupture that generated the earthquake occurred quite deep in the Earth's crust. The size of a tsunami, which means "harbour wave" in Japanese, is directly related to the volume of water that is displaced during the movement of the seabed during an earthquake. The bigger the amount of water that is moved up or down, the bigger the tsunami that is likely to be created.

Roger Musson, an earthquake scientist at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, explained that there are two factors to consider. The first is whether or not the movement of the seabed occurred in an area of shallow water – the shallower the water above the rupture, the smaller the tsunami. The second is how deep under the seabed the rupture occurred, with shallow quakes causing a greater displacement of water.

The huge earthquake that struck off the coast of Chile belongs to an "elite class" of mega earthquakes , experts said, and is similar to the 2004 Indian Ocean temblor that triggered deadly tsunami waves .

The magnitude-8.8 quake was a type called a "megathrust," considered the most powerful earthquake on the planet. Megathrusts occur when one tectonic plate dives beneath another. Saturday's tremor unleashed about 50 gigatons of energy and broke about 340 miles of the fault zone, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center.

The quake's epicenter was offshore and occurred about 140 miles north of the largest earthquake ever recorded - a magnitude-9.5 that killed about 1,600 people in Chile and scores of others in the Pacific in 1960.

"It's part of an elite class of giant earthquakes," said USGS geologist Brian Atwater. (source)

The number of people confirmed dead after Chile's earthquake has soared to 708 and is expected to rise further, President Michelle Bachelet has said.

Previously about 300 people had been reported to have been killed in Saturday's 8.8 magnitude quake - one of the most powerful recorded.

Massive damage is hampering rescue teams as they struggle to reach those still buried in the rubble.

The Chilean government has declared a curfew in two of the worst-hit areas.

State television reported that the curfew would apply in the regions of Maule and Concepcion, and begin at 2100 local time (midnight GMT).

The army is being sent to support police to prevent unrest in Concepcion.(BBC)

Chile is on a hotspot of sorts for earthquake activity. And so the 8.8-magnitude temblor that shook the capital region overnight was not a surprise, historically speaking. Nor was it outside the realm of normal, scientists say, even though it comes on the heels of other major earthquakes.

One scientist, however, says that relative to a time period in the past, the Earth has been more active over the past 15 years or so. 

The Chilean earthquake, and the tsunami it spawned, originated on a hot spot known as a subduction zone, where one plate of Earth's crust dives under another. It's part of the very active "Ring of Fire," a zone of major crustal plate clashes that surround the Pacific Ocean.

"This particular subduction zone has produced very damaging earthquakes throughout its history," said Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

The world's largest quake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5, occurred along the same fault zone in May 1960. Even so, magnitude-8 earthquakes occur globally, on average, just once a year. Since magnitudes are given on a logarithmic scale, an 8.8-magnitude is much more intense than a magnitude 8, and so this event would be even rarer, said J. Ramón Arrowsmith, a geologist at Arizona State University.

So far, one fatality has been reported. An eight-year-old boy died, and two other children were injured, a hospital director in Salta revealed.

Officials said that the earthquake in Argentina was not an aftershock of the massive 8.8 magnitude quake that struck Chile. It was a separate event. (ClevelandLeader)

The tsunami racing towards Hawaii right now, set off by the 8.8-magnitude earthquake near Chile's capital, appears poised to strike the city of Hilo first and hardest.

Current predictions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show waves of a little more than 8 feet headed for Hilo. The first wave is expected to strike at about 4:05 p.m. EST. The NOAA does stress on its website that these are only estimates.

This wouldn't mark the first time massive waves have battered Hilo. On May 23, 1960, a tsunami triggered by an earthquake measuring more than 8.0 off the coast of Chile (sound familiar?) deluged Hilo with waves as high as 35 feet, destroying much of the city's downtown and killing 61 people.

The tsunami that struck Hilo on April 1, 1946 may have been even worse. A quake near the Aleutian Islands sent 30-foot waves that ravaged the city. Approximately 159 people were killed in Hawaii, many of them in Hilo.

The good news? The waves in 1946 and 1960 were considerably higher than what's expected today. Additionally, the loss of life was in part attributed to a lack of a warning system in 1946, and a failure of residents to heed the warnings in 1960. In contrast, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reports Hilo closed its airport as of 11 a.m. EST, and the state Department of Transportation mobilized vessels and crew this morning to clear the harbor areas. So, hopefully Hilo is prepared to avoid as much damage as possible.(Boston.com )