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The crater lies deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean and was formed around 66 million years ago – making it a contemporary of Chicxulub. It is thought that the asteroid hit Earth at around 72,000 kilometers (44,700 miles) per hour. Image credit: muratart/Shutterstock.com Some 66 million years ago, a massive asteroid slammed into Earth. The Chicxulub impactor, as it is called, famously wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs and left a huge crater at the edge of the Yucatán peninsula – but it may not have acted alone. New research has revealed that a second, smaller space rock smashed into our planet...

In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers pieced together the chemical identity of the asteroid that fueled the planet’s fifth mass extinction event. Sixty-six million years ago, the story of life on Earth took a dramatic turn when an asteroid collided with what’s now the Yucatán Peninsula in Chicxulub, Mexico. The aftereffects of the collision resulted in the extinction of an estimated 75% of animal species, including most dinosaurs except for birds. But practically nothing of the asteroid itself remains. In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers pieced together the chemical identity...

Scientists find fossil from THE DAY the dinosaurs died 66m years ago: Leg of Thescelosaurus was 'ripped off in aftermath' of huge asteroid strike that wiped out most species on Earth Dinosaurs were wiped out by the Chicxulub event - a plummeting asteroid that hit Earth 66 million years ago The asteroid more than six miles in diameter slammed into what is now Mexico, leaving a 93-mile wide crater Experts found the fossilised leg of a dinosaur killed and what appears to be a fragment of the asteroid itself Findings were made at Tanis, a renowned paleontological site in North...

We’ve long known a disaster took place about 66 million years ago, where in a geological instant, 75% of the plants and animals on Earth were wiped out, including all the land-roaming dinosaurs. But here’s a new detail about that event: Even though we can’t pinpoint exactly what year this disaster took place, we now know it happened during the springtime. Most scientists agree the disaster was an asteroid impact, where an asteroid at least 10 kilometers wide struck the Chicxulub region in the present-day Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The impact released 2 million times more energy than the most...

The dinosaur-killing Chicxulub meteor might have ignited an oilfield rather than forests when it slammed into the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago, say geologists. Smoke-related particles found in sediments formed at the time of the impact are strikingly similar to those created by modern high-temperature coal and oil burning, as opposed to forest fires, says Professor Simon Brassell of Indiana University. He and colleagues from Italy and the UK publish their report on the discovery in the May issue of the journal Geology. ...What he and his colleagues have found instead are particles called cenospheres, which resemble the...

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...

The Comet –“That Forever Changed Planet Earth” Posted on Feb 15, 2021 in Astronomy, Evolution, Science“It must have been an amazing sight, but we don’t want to see that again,” said Harvard astrophysicist, Avi Loeb about the comet that created the the Chicxulub crater off the coast of Mexico that spans 93 miles and runs 12 miles deep that forever changed Earth’s evolutionary history when it crashed 66 million years ago.The Scene at ImpactThe scene of the massive impact that brought the reign of the dinosaurs to an abrupt and calamitous end by triggering their sudden mass extinction, along with...

"It's obviously still inside the rock, so we have a few more years of digging ahead of us." Paleontologists in Argentina have discovered the fossilized remains of a 98 million-year-old titanosaur that they say may be from the largest animal ever to walk the earth. A team of researchers with Naturales y Museo, Universidad de Zaragoza, and Universidad Nacional del Comahue actually found the remains in 2012, but excavation work only began in 2015, according to paleontologist Jose Luis Carballido of the Museo Egidio Feruglio. In a new report published in the journal Cretaceous Research, the group lays out what...

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago crashed into Earth at “the deadliest possible angle”, researchers have concluded. The giant impacter struck what is today Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula at around 60 degrees — maximizing the production of climate-altering greenhouse gases. The global disaster caused by the space rock — which was bigger than Mount Everest — was far worse than once thought, Imperial College London experts said. Previous studies had suggested the asteroid came in at an angle of around 30 degrees, while others concluded that it crashed almost straight down. However, the team’s computer...

The interstellar object (alternatively a comet or an asteroid) that killed the dinosaurs when it slammed into Earth didn't work alone. Researchers have shown previously that its after-effects, such as tidal waves and earthquakes, played an important role in the mass extinctions of three-fourths of plant and animal life. Now, new research suggests that one of the most important factors was the soot-rich smoke from fires sparked by the collision. Clay Tabor, a geoscientist at the University of Connecticut, and his colleagues studied soot, sulfates and dust to see how each type of particle may have contributed to the cataclysm....

Scientists have been trying to figure out what killed off the dinosaurs for decades. Most agree the asteroid or comet that struck the Yucatan Peninsula some 66 million years ago, the Chicxulub meteorite, played a significant role in snuffing them out, but the significance of the Deccan Traps eruptions has puzzled scientists. Now, new research -- published Monday -- suggests the volcanic activity had a significant impact on Earth's climate, and perhaps, on the dinosaurs, too. "For the first time, we can provide insights into the distinct climatic and environmental impacts of Deccan Traps volcanism by analyzing a single material,"...

Dr. Stephen Brusatte, a Palaeontologist at University of Edinburgh and author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, is among those that have questions around the extraordinary claims made by the team that have... ... said he was “very excited about this discovery” but noted aside from a single partial dinosaur hip bone mentioned in the paper, ideas of a dinosaur graveyard being reported in the media lack any real evidence so far. “The New Yorker article reports a dinosaur graveyard with bones of many types of dinosaurs, along with feathers, eggs, and even embryos,” he said. “I’m afraid...

The most immediate effects of the terminal-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact, essential to understanding the global-scale environmental and biotic collapses that mark the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction, are poorly resolved despite extensive previous work. Here, we help to resolve this by describing a rapidly emplaced, high-energy onshore surge deposit from the terrestrial Hell Creek Formation in Montana. Associated ejecta and a cap of iridium-rich impactite reveal that its emplacement coincided with the Chicxulub event. Acipenseriform fish, densely packed in the deposit, contain ejecta spherules in their gills and were buried by an inland-directed surge that inundated a deeply incised river channel before accretion of...

The researchers say they found evidence in North Dakota of the asteroid hit in Mexico, including fish with hot glass in their gills from flaming debris that showered back down on Earth. They also reported the discovery of charred trees, evidence of an inland tsunami and melted amber. Additionally, University of Amsterdam professor Jan Smit said he and his colleagues found footsteps from dinosaurs moments before they met their untimely death. Smit said the footprints — one from a plant-eating hadrosaur and the other of a meat eater, maybe a small Tyrannosaurus Rex — is "definite proof that the dinosaurs...

66 million-year-old deathbed linked to dinosaur-killing meteor By Robert Sanders, Media relations| March 29, 2019March 29, 2019 Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) A meteor impact 66 million years ago generated a tsunami-like wave in an inland sea that killed and buried fish, mammals, insects and a dinosaur, the first victims of Earth’s last mass extinction event. The death scene from within an hour of...

Asteroids have been hitting the Earth for nearly 1 billion years, but the atmosphere has largely shielded the planet from some catastrophic events. However, some space rocks make their way through — including the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. But a new study notes that, over the past 290 million years, asteroids have been impacting the Earth at triple the rate they were previously and scientists aren't sure why. After looking at 1 billion years' worth of asteroid impacts on both the Earth and Moon, researchers found that dinosaurs' fate was perhaps an inevitability.

The floor of the Gulf of Mexico is one of the most geologically interesting stretches of the Earth’s surface. The gulf’s peculiar history gave rise to a landscape riddled with domes, pockmarks, canyons, faults, and channels — all revealed in more detail than ever before by a new 1.4 billion-pixel map. This striking view of the ocean floor off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas was created by a government agency you’ve likely never heard of called the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The bureau’s job is to manage exploration and development of the country’s offshore mineral and energy...

Russell Mapes, a graduate student from Grass Valley, Calif., ...explains that these sediments of eastern origin were washed down from a highland area that formed in the Cretaceous Period, between 65 million and 145 million years ago, when the South American and African tectonic plates separated and passed each other. That highland tilted the river's flow westward, sending sediment as old as 2 billion years toward the center of the continent. A relatively low ridge, called the Purus Arch, which still exists, rose in the middle of the continent, running north and south, dividing the Amazon's flow - eastward toward...

More than 65 million years ago, a six-mile wide asteroid smashed into Mexico's Yucatán peninsula, triggering earthquakes, tsunamis and an explosion of debris that blanketed the Earth in layers of dust and sediment. Now analysis of commercial oil drilling data—denied to the academic community until recently—offers the first detailed look at how the Chicxulub impact reshaped the Gulf of Mexico. Figuring out what happened after these types of impacts gives researchers a better idea of how they redistribute geological material around the world. It also gives scientists an idea of what to expect if another such impact were to occur...

Did a Planetary Society citizen scientist help find one of Earth’s biggest impact craters? About 66 million years ago, a 10-kilometer-wide hunk of rock smashed into Earth near what is now Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.The impact created a global dust cloud that snuffed out the sunlight, leading to the demise of 80 percent of Earth's plants and animals—including most of the dinosaurs. A 200-kilometer-wide crater buried near the city of Chicxulub is all that's left. It's ground zero for one of the world's most notable extinction events.But throughout Earth's history, there have actually been five major extinction events. The largest of...