Tag: asteroids
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Fossilized Evidence Reveals Extinction of Dinosaurs Led to Brief Epoch When Asteroids Ruled the Earth
It’s a few years old, but The Onion had a story about the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs… MÉRIDA, MEXICO—Shedding new light on a rarely discussed prehistoric era, paleontologists from the Ohio State University announced Friday they had uncovered fossilized evidence that confirmed the extinction of dinosaurs led to a brief epoch when asteroids ruled…
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PBS Eons: Could You Survive the K-Pg Extinction?
PBS Eons has another of their longer form videos which address major events in the history of the Earth. This one is about the K-Pg mass extinction event about 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Would/could you survive? Remember, this event took out the non-avian dinosaurs, the ammonites, and many,…
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Fragments of Asteroid With Mystery Origin Are Found Outside Berlin
The New York Times has a story about a meteorite with mysterious origins. A little after midnight on January 21st, 2024, a small meteor struck the Earth at Ribbeck, a village just outside Berlin, Germany. There was no damage. The meteor, probably less than three feet in diameter, was first spotted by Krisztián Sárneczky, a…
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Dinosaurs were on the up before asteroid downfall, study finds
Phys.org has a story about the state of the non-avian dinosaurs just before the K-Pg mass extinction about 66 million years ago. For a while, it was thought they were in decline before the asteroid strike. A new study published in the journal Science Advances found that the non-avian dinosaurs were actually thriving, entrenched in…
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Dino death due to volcano-asteroid double whammy
EarthSky has a story about the K-Pg mass extinction. The Big Five Mass Extinctions all involved multiple events or conditions to bring about the destruction they wrought. Volcanoes were usually a part of it. A recent paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences proposes that it was both the flood basalt…
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Video for ESCONI June 2021 General Meeting – “The Glasford Structure: A Marine Target Impact Crater with a Possible Connection to the Great Ordovician Meteorite Shower”
The speaker at our June 2021 meeting was Charles Monson from ISGS. Charles recently published on the Glasford Illinois impact structure and its relation to the Ordovician meteor event. WCBU, a joint service of Bradley University and Illinois State University, interviewed Charles back in November 2019. Their program is online and available for listening. His paper was…
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Phys.org: New evidence suggests it was matter ejected from the Chicxulub crater that led to impact winter
Phys.org has a story on new research about the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Since it’s discovery 40 years ago by Walter and Luis Alvarez, this mass extinction, which occurred approximately 66 million years ago, has been a source for much research. The cause is generally thought to be the large meteor that struck the…
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Palaeocast Episode 112: Extinction of the dinosaurs
Palaeocast has an episode on the extinction of the dinosaurs. The episode is an interview with Dr Alessandro Chiarenza about some very thorough analysis that compares the Chicxulub asteroid event with the volcanic eruptions at the Deccan Traps. The paper detailing this analysis can be found in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of…
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Dinosaur-dooming asteroid struck earth at ‘deadliest possible’ angle
Phys.org has a story about the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs. A study at Imperial College London did simulations and found that the angle of attack for the asteroid that struck the Earth at the end of the Cretaceous Period hit at the “deadliest possible” angle. All the details are in a paper published…
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AMNH: Asteroid Crash Course Live
The American Museum of Natural History is hosting a video course on Asteroids. Catch it over on Youtube on April 17th, 2020 at 1:30 PM. Join Curator Denton Ebel this Friday, April 17, at 1:30 pm on YouTube for a watch party of the Museum’s popular video series exploring asteroids, meteors, and meteorites. Ebel…
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Quanta: A Rapid End Strikes the Dinosaur Extinction Debate
Quanta Magazine has an interesting piece about the extinction of the dinosaurs. The article is an interview with Yale Paleontologist Pincelli Hull. Her principle sub-field of study is marine plankton fossils. In the interview, she discusses some new evidence that the full blame for the K-T extinction lies with the asteroid that struck the Yucatan…
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Earth was stressed before dinosaur extinction
Phys.org has an interesting story about the extinction of the dinosaurs. A new study, led by researchers from Northwestern University, shows that the chemistry of fossilized clam and snail shells changed greatly in the years leading up to the K-Pg mass extinction event. This change is likely due to a large influx of carbon into…
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Roy Plotnick: The First Day of the Rest of Life
Roy Plotnick has a great post about of the last day of the Mesozoic Era (or the first day of the Cenozoic Era). It would have been a very bad day, indeed! On a day some sixty-six million years ago, life was Earth was suddenly and irreversibly altered. An enormous asteroid or comet struck the…
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The Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Acidified the Ocean in a Flash
New York Times has a story about the K-Pg mass extinction event. A recently published paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that the meteor at the end of the Cretaceous had an immediate and catastrophic effect on the ocean. What happened to the dinosaurs when an asteroid about six miles wide struck…
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Quicks & Quarks: A catastrophe frozen in time — a new fossil site shows how the dinosaurs died
CBC Radio’s Quicks & Quarks has a segment on a newly discovered fossil deposit that reveals many clues about the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs. The site is a snapshot in time from a few hours after the impact. The North Dakota site, nicknamed Tanis after the “lost” ancient Egyptian city, lies on private…
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PBS NOVA: The Day the Dinosaurs Died
PBS Nova has full video of the “The Day the Dinosaurs Died” episode on their website. It originally aired back in December 2017 and is a good one! 66 million years ago, a seven-mile-wide asteroid collided with Earth, triggering a chain of events that coincide with the end of the dinosaurs. But experts have long…
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Geophysicists propose new theory to explain origin of water
Cosmos Magazine has an article about the origin of Earth’s water. A paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets challenges the widely-accepted ideas – maybe it didn’t come from an asteroid impact. Earth’s water may not have originated solely from material carried by asteroids, according to new US research. A study in the Journal…
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NOVA: Day the Dinosaurs Died
PBS NOVA has a program on the “Day the Dinosaurs Died”. The full episode is available for viewing on the PBS website! Program DescriptionA seven-mile-wide asteroid collided with Earth 66 million years ago, triggering a chain of events that coincide with the end of the dinosaurs. But experts have long debated exactly what happened when…
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New analysis of Chicxulub asteroid suggests it may have struck in vulnerable spot
Phys.org has a story about the Chicxulub asteroid that took out the dinosaurs. A paper published in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that had the asteroid struck the Earth in a different location it is possible the non-avian dinosaurs may have survived the event. The researchers from Tokohu University analysed multiple data sources about the…
