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The Earth is hit every day by a meteor less than 5 m (16 ft) in diameter that disintegrates before reaching the surface. The meteors that do make it to the surface tend to strike unpopulated areas and cause no harm. A human is more likely to die in a fire, flood, or other natural disaster than to die because of an asteroid or comet impact. [2]
Iridium is extremely rare in Earth's crust because it is a siderophile element which mostly sank along with iron into Earth's core during planetary differentiation. [12] Instead, iridium is more common in comets and asteroids. [8] Because of this, the Alvarez team suggested that an asteroid struck the Earth at the time of the K–Pg boundary. [12]
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.
Large crocodilians can take prey as big as or bigger than humans. Most of the data about such attacks involve the saltwater crocodile, the Nile crocodile, the mugger crocodile, the American crocodile, the American alligator and the black caiman. Other species that often attack humans are Morelet's crocodile and the spectacled caiman. [151]
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 ...
When the Sun becomes 10% brighter in about a billion years, [192] Earth will suffer a moist greenhouse effect resulting in its oceans boiling away, while the Earth's liquid outer core cools due to the inner core's expansion and causes the Earth's magnetic field to shut down. In the absence of a magnetic field, charged particles from the Sun ...
These “internal waves,” as he calls them, create vortices which bring colder water from the depths of the ocean higher up — important for the planet’s climate.
Because it was not then known that Deinosuchus had a broad snout, Colbert and Bird miscalculated the proportions of the skull, and the reconstruction greatly exaggerated its overall width and length. Despite its inaccuracies, the reconstructed skull became the best-known specimen of Deinosuchus , and brought public attention to this giant ...