Scientists Discover More Evidence of That Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid
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Scientists discover more evidence of that dinosaur-killing asteroid
Scientists Discover New Evidence of the Asteroid That Killed Off the DinosaursScientists at the University of Texas at Austin have found "hard evidence" of the asteroid that killed off dinosaurs. The research, published Monday and reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, shows the asteroid caused wildfires and tsunamis after hitting with the impact of 10 billion WWII-era atomic bombs.
Inside an impact crater off the Gulf of Mexico were charcoal and soil, which were swept inside by the backflow of the tsunami in the first 24 hours, the research said. This showed how the blast ignited trees and plants thousands of miles away from the impact zone, and triggered a far-reaching inland tsunami across the Americas.
But no sulfur was found in the core of the impact crater -- meaning around 325 billion metric tons of sulfur was released into the atmosphere that day, the scientists said. This destroyed Earth's existing climate, blocking out the sun and causing a global cooling period that caused the "mass extinction" of the dinosaurs.
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[...] The sediments also offer chemical evidence that the cataclysm blew hundreds of billions of tons of sulfur from pulverized ocean rock into the atmosphere, triggering a global winter in which temperatures world-wide dropped by as much as 30 degrees Fahrenheit for decades, the scientists said.
"It tells us what went on inside the crater on that day of doom that killed the dinosaurs," said Jay Melosh, a geophysicist at Purdue University who studies impact craters and wasn't a member of the drilling team. "All of this mayhem is directly recorded in the core."
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