(Image source: BBC)
BY LOGAN TITTLE
Roughly 65 million years ago, a fairly large
rock came down from space and slammed right
into the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, dramatically
wiping out more than half of the Earth’s
species.
Yes, we’re mostly talking about the dinosaurs.
But what that ‘rock’ exactly was, was
a point of contention within the science community.
With some arguing the “rock” was a comet,
and others an asteroid.
Now, some scientists say they’ve identified
the catastrophic culprit: a comet.
(via Wordpress)
This comet conclusion was presented at the
44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
The research was based on evidence suggesting
the object that left the large crater in Mexico
was smaller than earlier thought.
Until now, the widely held belief was that
the end of the dinosaurs, commonly known as
the K-T event, started near the town of Chicxulub,
Mexico.
The impact resulted in a 110-mile-wide crater.
LiveScience explains the force needed to make
that kind of dent in the Earth amounts to
100 trillion tons of TNT.
To put it into historical comparison: That’s
more than one billion times the amount of
explosives in the atom bombs that destroyed
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But the BBC reports other researchers still
suspect an asteroid as the more likely candidate.
They say a comet simply wouldn’t have had
the mass to cause such a large crater.
For a smaller space rock to have produced
such a wide crater, it would have to be travelling
fairly quickly, to say the least.
And this theory is all under the assumption
Chicxulub was ground zero.
Scientists believe the impact site also could
have been the Shiva crater in India.
Other factors could have contributed to the
dinosaurs’ end, too, including dramatic
climate change and volcanic eruptions.
(via MumbaiNet)
What we know for sure is the dinosaurs died,
and the only species said to have survived
the alleged impact are birds but what wiped
them out, we may never know for sure.
