The end came quickly. Fifteen minutes after the first light shock shocked a T-Rex pack, the dinosaurs were dead, as were the vast majority of animals they had lived with. Paleontologist Steve Brusatte summed up the impact of a massive asteroid strike 66 million years ago. According to a recent study, the scenario could have been the same.
A drill core from the impact crater of the asteroid reveals what happened in the first hours after the event, report researchers to Sean Gulick from the University of Texas (USA) in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences".
Water and fire
The chunk of space more than ten kilometers across struck off the coast of the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula. Only 24 hours later, a 130-meter-thick layer of dust, earth and charcoal had piled up on the edge of the crater. From a section of these ring-shaped hill chains comes the drill core now under investigation.
The researchers analyzed the individual layers and were thus able to reconstruct what had to happen in the first hours after the impact. Accordingly, a tsunami made its way towards the coast. The megawave could have penetrated far into the interior of the surrounding continents, the researchers believe. At the same time huge fires spread. As the water receded, it tore the charcoal produced by the fires with it and deposited it on the edge of the crater.
One particular detail puzzled the researchers: some rock in the core contained less than one percent of sulfur, even though the rock originally consisted of 50 percent of the material. The researchers' explanation: Due to the impact, sulfur compounds have to be vaporized in large quantities and released into the atmosphere.
This changed the world climate. The sulfur-containing aerosols partially shielded the sunlight. Plants came in and with them the food basis for many animals. Whole food chains collapsed. About 75 percent of all life was destroyed. The end of the dinosaurs had come.
