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Artist's impression of the asteroid slamming into tropical, shallow seas of the sulfur-rich Yucatán Peninsula in what is today Southeast Mexico. [13] The aftermath of the asteroid collision, which occurred approximately 66 million years ago, is believed to have caused the mass extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and many other species on Earth. [13]
Luis Walter Alvarez, left, and his son Walter, right, at the K–T Boundary in Gubbio, Italy, 1981. The Alvarez hypothesis posits that the mass extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs and many other living things during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was caused by the impact of a large asteroid on the Earth.
A study of 29 fossil sites in Catalan Pyrenees of Europe in 2010 supports the view that dinosaurs there had great diversity until the asteroid impact, with more than 100 living species. [135] More recent research indicates that this figure is obscured by taphonomic biases and the sparsity of the continental fossil record.
The asteroid that killed most dinosaurs 66 million years ago left behind traces of its own origin. Researchers think they know where the Chicxulub impactor came from based on levels of ruthenium.
The asteroid responsible for our last mass extinction 66 million years ago — wiping out the dinosaurs — originated from the far reaches of our solar system, unlike most asteroids that have ...
The study shows that the asteroid, while having a severe initial impact, did not immediately kill off the dinosaurs - instead slowly killing them off over a few years.
Walter Alvarez at the original site where he discovered the dinosaur extinction evidence near Gubbio, Italy. Alvarez and his father Luis W. Alvarez, together with Frank Asaro and Helen Michel, discovered that a clay layer occurring right at the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary was highly enriched in the element iridium.
An asteroid an estimated 6-9 miles (10-15 km) wide slammed into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, triggering a global cataclysm that eradicated about three-quarters of the world's ...