2,000 gigatons of dust wiped out the dinosaurs from Earth

It appears that dinosaurs became extinct due to dust emitted after an asteroid collided with Earth 66 million years ago.

The exact cause of the impact on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, which wiped out 75% of species on Earth, has puzzled scientists for decades, with forest fires, volcanic eruptions and massive amounts of sulfur considered the “main culprits.”

They estimated the total amount of dust was about 2,000 gigatons, more than 11 times the weight of Mount Everest.

The researchers ran simulations based on sediments discovered in an area in North Dakota called Tanis that preserve evidence of post-impact conditions. A scientist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium and Vrije Université Brussels, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, said simulations showed that this dust could inhibit photosynthesis for up to two years by making the atmosphere opaque to sunlight.

According to what scientists reported, a cloud layer of rocks formed and the Earth witnessed a decrease in its surface temperature by about 27 degrees. When the plants died, the herbivores starved to death. The carnivores ran out of prey and perished.

“It has been cold and dark for years,” said a scientist at Vrije Universiteit Brussels and co-author of the study.

Steve Brochat, a professor of paleontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study, described the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs as a “revelation.”

“It was the largest asteroid to hit Earth in the past half a billion years. It didn’t kill all the dinosaurs at once, but it was a vicious killer that ignited a war of attrition that killed three out of four species,” he added.

Source: Reuters, Guardian