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Ever since dinosaurs disappeared from the face of the Earth, researchers and archaeologists have been trying to figure out what exactly led to the extinction of thee, giant creatures. An asteroid impact on Earth is often believed to be the reason behind dinosaurs extinction. And now researchers believe that they have “closed the case” of what killed the dinosaurs. The researchers link the extinction with an asteroid based on one major evidence - they found asteroid dust inside the impact crater.
The new study is led by Steven Goderis, a geochemistry professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, has been published in Science Advances on Feb. 24. The study is the latest to come from a 2016 International Ocean Discovery Program mission co-led by The University of Texas at Austin that collected nearly 3,000 feet of rock core from the crater buried under the seafloor.
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Researchers believe they have closed the case of what killed the dinosaurs, definitively linking their extinction with an asteroid that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago by finding a key piece of evidence: asteroid dust inside the impact crater.
The crater left by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs is located in the Yucatán Peninsula. It is called Chicxulub after a nearby town. Part of the crater is offshore and part of it is on land. The crater is buried beneath many layers of rock and sediment. A 2016 mission led by the International Ocean Discovery Program extracted rock cores from the offshore portion of the crater. Credit: The University of Texas at Austin/Jackson School of Geosciences/ Google Map.
Experts studied over 900 metres of sediment from below the Chicxulub crater
This is the crater left behind by a giant 11km asteroid that hit 66 million years ago
The crater samples of sediment include the element Iridium, rare in Earth crust
However, it is common in some asteroids and this closes the debate on whether it was volcanic activity or an asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs, experts say