Posted on 08/09/2021 12:17:03 PM PDT by Red Badger
About 66 million years ago, an estimated 6-mile-wide (9.6 kilometers) object slammed into Earth, triggering a cataclysmic series of events that resulted in the demise of non-avian dinosaurs.
Now, scientists think they know where that object came from.
According to new research, the impact was caused by a giant dark primitive asteroid from the outer reaches of the solar system's main asteroid belt, situated between Mars and Jupiter. This region is home to many dark asteroids — space rocks with a chemical makeup that makes them appear darker (reflecting very little light) compared with other types of asteroids.
"I had a suspicion that the outer half of the asteroid belt — that's where the dark primitive asteroids are — may be an important source of terrestrial impactors," said David Nesvorný, a researcher from the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, who led the new study. "But I did not expect that the results [would] be so definitive," adding that this might not be true for smaller impactors.
Clues about the object that ended the reign of non-avian dinosaurs have previously been found buried in the Chicxulub crater, a 90-mile-wide (145 km) circular scar in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula left by the object's collision. Geochemical analysis of the crater has suggested that the impacting object was part of a class of carbonaceous chondrites — a primitive group of meteorites that have a relatively high ratio of carbon and were likely made very early on in the solar system's history.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
I guess you showed up long AFTER the bug-zapper thread.
FR lore.
I’m going to have to find it. Seriously, it is like the craziness that comes with “Gold Fever”.
Neckless? A pharaoh with no neck?
Informative story, though.
Pretty much every land animal that survived the Chicxulub impact was a burrow dweller/nester.
Nothing much larger than a house cat made it through.
Given that, I’d guess the surviving early birds were like modern puffins, or burrowing owls, to name only two of the numerous modern examples.
AND, burrow dwellers live, nest, and sleep in confined spaces, which due to respiration and relatively poor ventilation, have lower oxygen and higher carbon dioxide levels.
This is like training wheels for devastated earth’s thinned and scorched atmosphere!
That was the event that inspired me to get a dash cam...
ok thats the funniest thing ive seen today
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