Dinosaurs died out within hours, new study suggests
Researchers say superheated rock vapor and fiery spherules may have ignited global wildfires and killed many dinosaurs within hours.
- New research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences suggests the 66 million-year-old Chicxulub asteroid impact killed terrestrial life within hours, creating a thick, worldwide dust blanket that intensified surface heat.
- The Chicxulub asteroid slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula, vaporizing massive amounts of rock that condensed into tiny "spherules" generating an intense heat pulse as they fell back to Earth's surface.
- Purdue University planetary scientist Brandon Johnson found the dust layer magnified surface heat by 3.5 times, exposing organisms to 17 times the lethal dose of radiation for humans, causing fatal heat stroke.
- Johnson explained the team's findings suggest rapid mass extinction, noting the "flash-cooked" scenario contrasts with alternative theories crediting a long-term post-impact winter for dinosaur extinction.
- University College London paleontologist Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, uninvolved in the study, said researchers could eventually find a record of global wildfires, though "we just don't have it so far.
23 Articles
23 Articles
Why the dinosaurs disappeared: The asteroid that ended their reign struck Earth with a force of around 100 million megatons
Science News: For more than 160 million years, dinosaurs dominated life on Earth. They survived shifting continents, volcanic eruptions, changing climates and count.
Possible Consequence of the Impact: Did the Global Layer of Dust Cause the Dinosaurs to Die of Heat?
A research team provides a new explanation for the end of the dinosaurs: According to this, a global cloud of fine particles formed after the asteroid impact, which deadly heated up the atmosphere. Forests caught fire and animals that could not protect themselves died.
For decades the scientific community considered that the extinction of the dinosaurs, which occurred 66 million years ago, had been caused by the shock wave of the meteorite of Chicxulub, combined with a global winter caused by the release of sulphur and the consequent acid rains. Today, two separate researches published a few days later overturn these beliefs and [...] The article "It was not an asteroid that extinguished the dinosaurs, but a b…
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