![]() ![]() ![]() A huge blast wave and heatwave went out and it threw vast amounts of material up into the atmosphere. It made a huge crater, so in the immediate area there was total devastation. ![]() Paul explains, 'The asteroid hit at high velocity and effectively vaporised. So how was this global mass extinction caused by a rock hurtling into the coast of Central America? 'Recent redating has refined it, and the date of the dinosaur extinction is 66.0 million years ago.' Why did dinosaurs go extinct?Īround 75% of Earth's animals, including dinosaurs, suddenly died out at the same point in time. There is also evidence of substantial fires from that point in history.įor a long time it was thought that the non-bird dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.īut Paul explains, 'The dating of those layers of clay around the world is very accurate - it's estimated to within a couple of thousands of years. The dinosaur-killing crash threw huge amounts of debris into the air and caused massive tidal waves to wash over parts of the American continents. It's the second-largest crater on the planet. The asteroid is thought to have been between 10 and 15 kilometres wide, but the velocity of its collision caused the creation of a much larger crater, 150 kilometres in diameter. The impact site, known as the Chicxulub crater, is centred on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. It is exactly the same age as the extinction of the non-bird dinosaurs, which can be tracked in the rock record all around the world.' It's now largely buried on the seafloor off the coast of Mexico. Paul says, 'An asteroid impact is supported by really good evidence because we've identified the crater. How big was the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs? The Alvarez hypothesis was initially controversial, but it is now the most widely accepted theory for the mass extinction at the end of the Mesozoic Era. Any fragment of an asteroid that survives landing on Earth becomes known as a meteorite. They range from a few to hundreds of metres in diameter. Asteroids are large, rocky bodies that orbit the Sun. ![]()
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