Dinosaurs Extinction: Asteroid the Cause

This has been a never-ending debate. How did the dinosaurs go extinct? Dinosaurs extinction has been a subject of extensive research. And now a global research scientific team comprising around 40 scientists has said that the only credible explanation about the extinction of dinosaurs is a massive asteroid hit. This revelation is a result of 20 years of extensive research, of happenings of 65 million years ago. The global team had scientists from the United States, Europe, Mexico, Canada and Japan.

Earlier, expert opinion was divided over 2 theories related to dinosaurs extinction. One was the asteroid hit at Chicxulub (now Mexico), and the other was super volcano eruptions in the Deccan Traps (now India), that lasted for around one and a half million years. Now this new study has confirmed that a 9-mile wide asteroid crashing into the Earth is the actual cause for dinosaurs extinction, along with extinction of more than half of all the species on the Earth. The asteroid hit Earth with a force that was a billion times more powerful than that of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Co-author Joanna Morgan of Imperial College London said, "We now have great confidence that an asteroid was the cause of the KT extinction. This triggered largescale fires, earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale, and continental landslides, which created tsunamis. The 'final nail in the coffin for the dinosaurs' came when blasted material flew into the atmosphere, shrouding the planet in darkness, causing a global winter and 'killing off many species' that couldn't adapt to this hellish environment." Lead author Peter Schulte of the University of Erlangen in Germany said, "Fossil records clearly show a mass extinction about 65.5 million years ago - a time now known as the K-Pg boundary." Co-author Gareth Collins from Imperial College said, "The asteroid impact created a 'hellish day' that signaled the end of the 160-million-year reign of the dinosaurs, but also turned out to be a great day for mammals. The KT extinction was a pivotal moment in Earth's history, which ultimately paved the way for humans to become the dominant species on Earth."

You can also read a very nice article on types of dinosaurs.

The team, over 20 years analyzed the works of paleontologists, geochemists, climate modelers, geophysicists and sedimentologists, all collecting evidence about the KT extinction. Besides wiping out the dinosaurs and many other living things on planet Earth, the asteroid hit also destroyed marine and land ecosystems at a very very fast pace.