Chiksulub: a huge trail of meteorite, due to which the end of the era of dinosaurs came

Many inhabitants of our planet are not interested in flying comets and asteroids, and a collision with a large celestial body seems unlikely to them. If you still believe that the fears of astrophysicists about the fall of a meteorite to Earth are something of a science fiction category, then we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the history of the Chiksulub crater. Most paleontologists agree that this gigantic structure, the scale of which can only be estimated using a satellite image, remained after a collision with a meteorite, thereby causing the extinction of dinosaurs.

The debate about why there was a mass extinction of the fauna, as a result of which the dinosaurs disappeared, continues to this day. One thing is clear: at the end of the Cretaceous period, a global catastrophe occurred on the planet, which not all species of living creatures survived. The most likely cause of natural disasters and the ensuing mass extinction is considered to be a meteorite, the place of impact of which is on the Yucatan Peninsula.

To be more precise, only a part of the crater is located on the peninsula - the rest is hidden from us in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Oddly enough, but for the first time it was discovered precisely its underwater part, and not the one located on land. A giant crater with a diameter of about 180 kilometers (and a number of studies even indicate a figure of 300 kilometers) were discovered by geophysicists who were looking for a convenient place for drilling an oil well. But the results of the interpretation of underwater shooting showed that they found something more grandiose - the solution to the mass death and further extinction of dinosaurs on our planet.

Scientists believe that the approximate diameter of a celestial body that left a mark in the form of the Chiksulub crater was 10 kilometers. The estimated time of the fall is 65 million years ago, just at the time when the heyday of ancient reptiles, many of which reached enormous proportions, was observed on the planet. The heavenly body fell at a time when brachiosaurs grazed peacefully on the planet, and giant plesiosaurs swam in the warm seas. The shock wave was so strong that it caused a tremendous tsunami that swept across the planet. The fall of smaller burning fragments provoked massive fires, as indirectly indicated by high concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of that era.

According to geologists, the shock wave of incredible power provoked an intensification of volcanic activity, which also replenished the atmosphere with toxic substances, smoke and ash. It was the smoke screen that covered the Earth from sunlight for a long period of time, and led to a cooling. Various authors do not agree on how much the temperature on Earth has changed, but most agree that this figure was at least 20 ° C downward. In the seas, this figure was not so grandiose, but the lack of full sunlight ultimately led to the extinction of phytoplankton and all animals entering the food chain starting with it.

There are alternative causes of mass extinction in the Late Cretaceous. Nevertheless, the fall of a grandiose meteorite in the area of ​​modern Yucatan looks most convincing. It is worth noting that the Chiksulub crater is not the largest trace of a meteorite fall on our planet. To date, the largest impact crater is Wredefort in South Africa, which we talked about in detail here.

Watch the video: How life on Earth died 65 million years ago (March 2024).

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