Having dominated the planet’s surface for hundreds of millions of years, dinosaur diversity came to a dramatic conclusion some 66 million years ago at the hot end of an asteroid impact with what is today Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.
It’s a theory so swollen with data that it’s hard to imagine any room for doubt remains that this is indeed what happened. Were it a cold case, it’d be rubber-stamped and filed under ‘Solved’ by now.
But scientists are a nitpicky bunch, and a tiny gap in the chain of evidence linking signs of a global apocalypse with the scene of the crime has been begging to be closed.
An international team of researchers collaborating on a study of material from the Yucatán Peninsula’s famous Chicxulub impact crater has finally matched the chemical signature of meteoritic dust within its rock with that of the geological boundary representing the dinosaur extinction event.
It appears to be a clear sign that the thin blanket of dust deposited on Earth’s crust 66 million years ago originated from an impact event at this very spot.
Read more at https://www.sciencealert.com/remains-of-the-asteroid-that-ended-dinosaur-reign-closes-case-on-impact-theory