An asteroid with the power of 10 billion atomic bombs from World War II may have annihilated the dinosaurs

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(CNN) - Scientists have discovered evidence that the impact of an asteroid as powerful as 10 billion atomic bombs from World War II caused the extinction of dinosaurs.

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The 7.5-mile (12 km) wide asteroid hit Earth 66 million years ago and caused 75% of life on the planet to die out, according to research conducted by the University of Texas and published in the PNAS newspaper . It is believed that the event caused forest fires more than 1,448 kilometers away, in addition to causing a devastating tsunami.

Many dinosaurs would have died that day, but others could have perished from the atmospheric consequences that followed. Scientists believe that the Earth cooled dramatically after sulfur was released into the atmosphere, blocking the sun and killing life.

The new research was based on rocks collected in 2016 from the Chicxulub impact site, on the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, in Mexico.

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Professor Sean Gulick, who led the study, told CNN: “For me, personally, successfully collecting the cores of the maximum ring of the Chicxulub crater was the result of years of proposal writing and planning come true.

"It was really an exciting time when we first encountered the sediments of the impact itself and, moreover, when we realized that we were seeing events in such detail."

Gulick added that the project presented an unusual opportunity for geologists to read the "rock log", as 130 meters of rock in the crater represented the events of the day the asteroid collided. Usually, a centimeter of rock represents every 1,000 years.

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Gulick and his team concluded - due to the abundance of sulfur-rich rocks near the crater and their absence inside it - that the asteroid must have vaporized any sulfur previously present.

They estimate that 325,000 million metric tons or more of sulfur were expelled into the atmosphere after the impact of the giant rock. This is four orders of magnitude greater than the amount released by the Krakatoa eruption in 1883, which caused an average temperature drop of -16.6 degrees Celsius for five years.

Asteroid Dinosaur