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A 9 km asteroid hit Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, causing a mass extinction. A new study suggests that if it had hit elsewhere, the damage wouldn’t have been as catastrophic and dinosaurs may have survived. Only 13% of the Earth’s surface had the right composition for such an extinction.
A roughly 5.6-mile (9 km) wide asteroid is believed to have crashed into what is now Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula about 66 million years ago, wiping out 75 percent of species on Earth. The deadly rock struck with the force of 10 billion nuclear bombs, experts say, and sent so many soot and sulfate particles into the atmosphere that it blocked out the sun, cooling the planet and triggering an ecosystem collapse that has wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs. But if it had hit almost everywhere, the damage wouldn’t have been as catastrophic and the dinosaurs would have survived, according to a new study.
It all started with a bang:
In a November 2017 article published in Scientific Reports, Japanese scientists say that only 13% of the earth’s surface had the right composition to cause such a mass extinction.
Dinosaurs could still roam the Earth, they say, if the celestial object struck almost anywhere on the planet.
The impact zone was rich in hydrocarbons and sulphates, the scientists wrote, and the impact produced a deadly stew of “stratospheric soot and sulphate aerosols,” triggering extreme global cooling and drought.
