Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

The asteroid impact that ended the age of dinosaurs 65 million years ago didn't incinerate life on our planet's surface - it just broiled it, a new study suggests. The work resolves nagging questions about a theory that the impact triggered deadly wildfires around the world, but it also raises new questions about just what led to the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period.

The Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, which wiped out the dinosaurs and more than half of species on Earth, was caused by an asteroid colliding with Earth and not massive volcanic activity, according to a comprehensive review of all the available evidence." id="metasummary

The enduringly popular theory that the Chicxulub crater holds the clue to the demise of the dinosaurs, along with some 65 percent of all species 65 million years ago, is challenged in a paper to be published in the Journal of the Geological Society on April 27, 2009.

Gerta Keller (Princeton University) and Thierry Adatte (University of Lausanne) believe the Chicxulub crater in northern Yucatan was formed some 300,000 years before the mass extinction occurred. Moreover, Keller argues in the upcoming Journal of the Geological Society that not a single species went extinct as a result of the impact.

A new model for comet production revises the theory of their origins