Yes, the dinosaurs were incredibly ‘unlucky’. Just as well for us | Brian Switek

If the Yucatin asteroid hadn't struck, dinosaurs would have continued ruling Earth - and our primate forebears taken a very different evolutionary route

Sixty-six million years ago, dinosaurs had an exceptionally bad day. A chunk of space rock nine kilometres across smacked into what's now Mexico's Yucatin peninsula, instantaneously triggering an extinction event that for ever changed the nature of life on Earth. This is one of the rare moments when we can look back at a pivotal point, where history veered off on an unexpected path. Maybe that's why we've been so obsessed with what would have happened if Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops and other Cretaceous celebrities hadn't gone extinct.

The urge to hit rewind on deep time and wonder about the fate of the non-avian dinosaurs is even stronger now that a study has determined that the terrible lizards were not only unlucky, but extraordinarily unlucky. The asteroid hit rock layers so rich in hydrocarbons that the impact threw massive amounts of soot and sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere, putting the chill on organisms that survived the initial blast. And the kicker? Rocks with such amounts of hydrocarbons cover only about 13% of the Earth's surface.

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