Study: Dinosaurs were charbroiled after Chicxulub impact
The study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences suggests that the asteroid impact responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago could have caused the creatures to be charbroiled in the aftermath. The impact, originating from an asteroid measuring between 11 and 81 kilometers in size, ejected massive amounts of vaporized rock and sulfates into the atmosphere, leading to a superheated cloud and widespread wildfires.
This catastrophic event, known as the Alvarez hypothesis, is attributed to the late physicist Luis Alvarez and his son Walter, who proposed the theory in 1980 based on the analysis of sedimentary layers containing high levels of iridium—a metal more commonly found in asteroids. The discovery of the Chicxulub crater in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, formed by the impactor, further supports the hypothesis.
The impact released energy equivalent to over a billion times the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
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