For many years, we have been taught in school, high school, and even in university that a large asteroid was the main culprit for the end of the dinosaur era. While the impact of this celestial body on our planet was highly significant in the near-total extinction of these beings, a new study could explain what truly wiped them out.
In a recent article published by the scientific journal Nature Geoscience, researchers believe that, although several factors severely affected hundreds of dinosaur species, previous studies overlooked the role of another effect: the billions of tons of dust that could have been propelled into the air when the asteroid hit.
When an asteroid, estimated to be between 10 and 15 kilometers wide, struck the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico about 66 million years ago, its impact caused immense devastation, triggering forest fires, earthquakes, and megatsunamis. This, in turn, led to the collapse of the ecosystem that supported the flourishing of plants and creatures.
Belgian researchers believe that the asteroid caused a “global winter,” as it is thought that massive dark clouds of silicate and sulfur dust swirled in the atmosphere, blocking sunlight and causing the global surface temperature to drop as low as 15°C.
The plants would have struggled to survive due to the lack of light, leading herbivores to die of starvation, leaving carnivores without prey and causing a massive extinction of 75% of the species in the entire food chain. The research asserts that the amount of dust that choked the atmosphere would have been approximately 2,000 gigatons; that is, more than 11 times the weight of Mount Everest.
This new study demonstrates that the asteroid, although it had a strong initial impact, didn’t immediately wipe out the dinosaurs but slowly killed them over a few years. A much more painful and cruel ending than we might have imagined, undoubtedly.
