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The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event, [a] also known as the K–T extinction, [b] was the mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth [2] [3] approximately 66 million years ago. The event caused the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs.
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.
The Cretaceous–Paleogene ("K-Pg" or "K-T") extinction event around 66 million years ago wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs and many other species. Proposed by Luis and Walter Alvarez , it is now widely accepted that the extinction was caused by a huge asteroid or bolide that impacted Earth in the shallow seas of the Gulf of Mexico , leaving ...
[145] [146] Nonetheless, in October 2019, researchers reported that the Cretaceous Chicxulub asteroid impact that resulted in the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs 66 Ma, also rapidly acidified the oceans, producing ecological collapse and long-lasting effects on the climate, and was a key reason for end-Cretaceous mass extinction.
The relatively large size of most dinosaurs and the low diversity of small-bodied dinosaur species at the end of the Cretaceous may have contributed to their extinction; [277] the extinction of the bird lineages that did not survive may also have been caused by a dependence on forest habitats or a lack of adaptations to eating seeds for survival.
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.
Luis (left) and his son Walter Alvarez (right) at the K-Pg Boundary in Gubbio, Italy, 1981. In 1980, a team of researchers led by Nobel prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez, his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, and chemists Frank Asaro and Helen Vaughn Michel discovered that sedimentary layers found all over the world at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary contain a concentration of iridium ...