Posted on 04/10/2019 11:59:24 AM PDT by Candor7
Sixty-six million years ago, a massive asteroid crashed into a shallow sea near Mexico. The impact carved out a 90-mile-wide crater and flung mountains of earth into space. Earthbound debris fell to the planet in droplets of molten rock and glass.
Ancient fish caught glass blobs in their gills as they swam, gape-mouthed, beneath the strange rain. Large, sloshing waves threw animals onto dry land, then more waves buried them in silt.
Scientists working in North Dakota recently dug up fossils of these fish: They died within the first minutes or hours after the asteroid hit, according to a paper published Friday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a discovery that has sparked tremendous excitement among paleontologists.
"You're going back to the day that the dinosaurs died," said Timothy Bralower, a Pennsylvania State University paleoceanographer who is studying the impact crater and was not involved with this work.
"That's what this is. This is the day the dinosaurs died."
About 3 in 4 species perished in what is called the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, also known as the K-Pg event or K-T extinction. The killer asteroid most famously claimed the dinosaurs.
But the T. rex and the triceratops were joined by hordes of other living things. Freshwater and marine creatures were victims, as were plants and microorganisms, including 93 percent of plankton. (A lone branch of dinosaurs, the birds, lives on.) SNIP
Once you start to watch Firefly it was gone. My favorite space ship based western. Gotta love it.
Google search: when did it change to 66 million years ago
https://tinyurl.com/y5aweuyl
BC / AD to CE. Global cooling then warming then change.
Pluto not a planet...
I think every so often ‘scientists’ change things just to create more grant money.
Barney: I love y... gaak ;-)
“Did you name him Rex?”
Mister T.
“I pity the [writer’s block]!”
Thanks Lurker.
|
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.