It was, to put it mildly, a bad day on Earth when an asteroid smacked Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, causing a global calamity that erased three-quarters of the world's species and ended the age of dinosaurs.
This artist's reconstruction depicts North Dakota in the first months following the impact of an asteroid off Mexico's coast 66 million years ago, showing a dark, dusty and cold world in which the last non-avian dinosaurs, illustrated by the species Dakotaraptor steini, were on the edge of...
Researchers on Monday revealed the potent role that dust from pulverized rock ejected into the atmosphere from the impact site may have played in driving extinctions, choking the atmosphere and blocking plants from harnessing sunlight for life-sustaining energy in a process called photosynthesis. The researchers ran paleoclimate simulations based on sediment unearthed at a North Dakota paleontological site called Tanis that preserved evidence of the post-impact conditions, including the prodigious dust fallout.
While prior research highlighted two other factors - sulfur released after the impact and soot from the wildfires - this study indicated dust played a larger role than previously known.
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