- Scientists are looking for the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs
- A new analysis found that dust from pulverized rock caused a nuclear winter
- READ MORE: Dinosaurs may NOT have been wiped out by an asteroid
Scientists announced Monday that it wasn’t the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, but that ejected debris played a crucial role.
The explanation comes from a team led by the Royal Observatory of Belgium, which found that dust from pulverized rock was ejected into Earth’s atmosphere, blocking out the sun and hindering plant photosynthesis.
New models showed that the amount of dust was about 2,000 gigatons – more than eleven times the weight of Mount Everest – and stuck in can remain in the atmosphere for up to fifteen years, causing a global nuclear winter.
As a result, vegetation would have died out, leading to the starvation of many herbivorous species, including some dinosaurs. catastrophic mass extinction event that wiped out 75 percent of Earth’s living things.
Scientists announced Monday that it wasn’t the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, but that ejected debris played a crucial role.
Scientists have been working tirelessly to unravel the mystery of dinosaur extinction since the Chicxulub crater was discovered in 1978.
However, the geological formation is not enough to conclude that the huge asteroid was enough to drive the dinosaurs to extinction.
The leading theory of late is that sulfur from the asteroid impact – or soot from the global wildfires it caused – blocked the sky and plunged the world into a long, dark winter, killing all but the lucky few , was killed.
However, research published Monday based on particles found at a critical fossil site confirmed an earlier hypothesis: that dust kicked up by the asteroid caused the impact winter.
The particles were found at the Tanis fossil site in the US state of North Dakota.
Although the site is 3,000 kilometers away from the crater, several notable finds have been preserved, which are believed to date from immediately after the asteroid impact into the sediment layers of an ancient lake.
The researchers said the dust particles were about 0.8 to 8.0 micrometers in size – just the right size to remain in the atmosphere for 15 years.
By inputting this data into climate models similar to those of today’s Earth, the researchers determined that dust likely played a much more important role in the mass extinction than previously thought.
Of all the material shot into the atmosphere by the asteroid, they estimated that it was 75 percent sulfur and one percent soot.
Sean Gulick, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin and not involved in the study, told AFP that the study was another interesting attempt to answer the “hot question” – what caused the winter’s impact – but did not provide a definitive answer. answer. .
He emphasized that discovering what happened during the world’s last mass extinction was important for understanding the past and the future.
“We may be able to better predict our own mass extinction, which we are probably in the midst of,” Gulick said.