What are new details of the dino-killing impact discovered in | Ask Me
What are new details of the dino-killing impact discovered in 2022?
The impact that ended the age of some 66 million years ago was the worst single day for the life on Earth. A 6.5-mile-wide asteroid called Chicxulub slammed into the waters off what is now Mexico, triggering a mass extinction that killed off more than 75 % of Earth’s species!
In 2022, researchers were studying a set of fossil fish that died in the blast and concluded the asteroid struck during spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
They provided another glimpse of the asteroid’s devastation: Within minutes of the impact, rocks that formed in the extreme temperatures rained down more than a thousand miles from the crater’s center.
Scientists also announced that they had found signs of another possible undersea crater off the coast of West Africa that is about the same age as Chicxulub—perhaps evidence that a fragment of the incoming asteroid broke off and smashed into Earth separately.
