The fauna of the Earth would be completely different now if the asteroid, which killed the lizards, arrived a few seconds earlier or later.
Scientists have clarified the details of the catastrophe that occurred 66 million years ago. Then an asteroid crashed into our planet - in the place where the Gulf of Mexico is now. It is believed that it was he who killed the dinosaurs, making the climate on Earth unacceptable for them.
Scientists say: the asteroid fell in the most inappropriate place
The explosion lifted billions of tons of sulfur compounds into the sky
- It was true, according to Sean Gulick, professor of geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin and professor Joanna Morgan from Imperial College London, who organized the drilling of the crater formed as a result of the fall of the asteroid. “But the dinosaurs were not killed by the blast or shrapnel or tsunami. They died as a result of catastrophic climate change.
Scientists drilled in the Gulf of Mexico in April-May last year
Drilling platform scientists
Cores with samples of deep rocks: they demonstrated that an asteroid fell into a gypsum deposit
The cores that the drillers dug to the surface from a depth of 1,300 meters indicate that the asteroid hit straight into a gypsum deposit, which partially evaporated. As a result, sulfate dust and sulfurous gases rose into the atmosphere - in fact, substances that volcanoes throw into the sky. And the impact of the asteroid was tantamount to an eruption of unprecedented power - a cloud hovering over the Earth containing 100 billion tons of sulfur. It became dark and cold. The temperature dropped by 26 degrees. Winter came and lasted for several decades. The plants that the herbivorous dinosaurs ate were killed. And they themselves died of hunger. And after the herbivores, predatory dinosaurs were drawn to the other world.
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Scientists believe that a 15-kilometer asteroid fell into the Gulf of Mexico. He crashed into our planet at a speed of about 60 thousand kilometers per hour. The explosion created a crater with a diameter of 120 and a depth of 30 kilometers. Soon the crater collapsed and expanded to 200 kilometers in diameter. Now it is hidden under a 600-meter layer of bottom sediments, through which scientists penetrated.
The diagram of the development of events 66 million years ago
And the most interesting thing: Gulik and Morgan assure that the dinosaurs could have survived if the asteroid had arrived even a few seconds earlier. Or later. Then he would not have fallen into shallow water, where he easily reached the bottom and blew up gypsum there, but would have crashed into a deep ocean and would have raised only spray. In this case, the consequences of the collision would not be so catastrophic for the climate. And for dinosaurs. They would have continued to eat more or less normally and, possibly, would have become adjacent to the mammals that appeared later. And even now they were found somewhere, they scared us.
ANOTHER OPINION
The dinosaurs didn't stand a chance. They began to die out even before the asteroid hit them
Professor Paul Renne and his team from the University of California at Berkeley, US have specified the age of the particles of matter that scattered around the globe after the fall of the asteroid in the Gulf of Mexico, compared with the age of the sediments in which there were found numerous remains of dinosaurs. And he drew conclusions, which he published in the journal Science.
First, the professor was the first to clarify: the same asteroid that left a crater with a diameter of about 200 kilometers fell to the Earth 180 thousand years earlier than it was generally believed. The exact time of the cataclysm is not "about 65 million years ago," as they said before Rennes's calculations, but 66 million 30 thousand years. It is to this date that everyone is now referring.
The researchers found that even before the asteroid fell, the climate on Earth was severely damaged by numerous volcanic eruptions. It's already getting colder here. And the frozen and starving dinosaurs were already on the verge of extinction. The professor believes that a blow from space finished off the lizards, greatly aggravating their situation. But they did not disappear immediately, but in about 30 thousand years.
Volcanoes began to kill dinosaurs
- The fall of the asteroid, - explains Rennes, - was the "last straw" as a result of which the Earth passed from the Mesozoic era to the present - Cenozoic. This cataclysm, of course, was the main reason for the extinction of dinosaurs, but not the only one.
By the way, the researchers found that after the fall of the asteroid, the carbon cycle in the Earth's atmosphere returned to normal for more than 5 thousand years. The oceans have been recovering for about 2 million years.
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Vladimir LAGOVSKY