North Dakota Fossil Site Evidence Suggests the Dinosaurs May Have Died in the Spring

New research points to when massive asteroid impact happened, and why only some animals survived. View in browser

Image credits: Jackson Leibach North Dakota Fossil Site Evidence Suggests the Dinosaurs May Have Died in the Spring New research points to when massive asteroid impact happened, and why only some animals survived. Charles Q. Choi, Contributor February 23, 2022       (Inside Science) -- The age of dinosaurs may have ended in springtime in Mexico, which may help explain the pattern of extinctions that resulted, a controversial new study now claims. After dominating the planet for roughly 135 million years, the dinosaurs' reign ended about 66 million years ago, with the killing blow most likely dealt by an asteroid roughly 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide. The result was a crater more than 110 miles (180 km) across, near what is now the town of Chicxulub in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. The meteor strike would have released as much energy as 100 trillion tons of TNT, more than a billion times more than the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The cosmic impact had global effects... Read more Copyright 2022 American Institute of Physics. Inside Science syndicates its articles, columns, blogs and videos to news organizations. To initiate syndication, or request permission to republish our content (on a one-time or continuing basis), please contact Inside Science at insidescience@aip.org. News organizations seeking permission to republish Inside Science content must fully credit Inside Science as the original source of the content, include the author byline, and republish the original, unaltered form (excluding content titles, headlines, or sub-headlines). The reprint format can be seen here. Copyright conditions and usage terms are subject to change at any time without consent or any type of prior notice. To unsubscribe from all future mailings from Inside Science please click here. To manage your email subscriptions please click here.

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