It's official: An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs

[MJ12]

LONDON (Reuters) – A giant asteroid smashing into Earth is the only plausible explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs, a global scientific team said on Thursday, hoping to settle a row that has divided experts for decades.
A panel of 41 scientists from across the world reviewed 20 years' worth of research to try to confirm the cause of the so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction, which created a "hellish environment" around 65 million years ago and wiped out more than half of all species on the planet.
Scientific opinion was split over whether the extinction was caused by an asteroid or by volcanic activity in the Deccan Traps in what is now India, where there were a series of super volcanic eruptions that lasted around 1.5 million years.
The new study, conducted by scientists from Europe, the United States, Mexico, Canada and Japan and published in the journal Science, found that a 15-kilometre (9 miles) wide asteroid slamming into Earth at Chicxulub in what is now Mexico was the culprit.
"We now have great confidence that an asteroid was the cause of the KT extinction. This triggered large-scale fires, earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale, and continental landslides, which created tsunamis," said Joanna Morgan of Imperial College London, a co-author of the review.
The asteroid is thought to have hit Earth with a force a billion times more powerful than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.

Morgan said the "final nail in the coffin for the dinosaurs" came when blasted material flew into the atmosphere, shrouding the planet in darkness, causing a global winter and "killing off many species that couldn't adapt to this hellish environment."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100304/sc_nm/us_dinosaurs_asteroid

 

[Remus]

STOP THE PRESSES!

 

[Krynn72]

 

[Raziaar]

If only this information had become available decades prior, it could have changed the world.

Wait... what?

 

[Remus]

The asteroid is thought to have hit Earth with a force a billion times more powerful than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima

Wha... We're gonna need a few dozen of them planet bustin' thangs.

Get to work boys!

 

[<RJMC>]

scientists are slow at making conclutions

 

[Tyguy]

what if it was an asteroid with volcanoes on it?

just sayin...

 

[CyberPitz]

Or a Volcano shooting asteroids?

 

[Sulkdodds]

Wha... We're gonna need a few dozen of them planet bustin' thangs.

Get to work boys!

And then the US army General was the Klendathu.

 

[CptStern]

dinosaurs you say? where does that leave Adam and (St)eve?

 

[Raziaar]

dinosaurs you say? where does that leave Adam and (St)eve?

Adam and Saint Eve evolved from asteroid dust and tsunami water.

 

[YROC]

When I was in elementary school, our teacher was always telling us dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid anyways.

 

[Krynn72]

When I was in elementary school, our teacher was always telling us dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid anyways.

They told us that they "think" it was an asteroid. My teachers were better than yours.

That's pretty awesome that there were volcanoes erupting for 1.5 million years. I didn't even know about that.

 

[Raziaar]

Something got the earth all hot and bothered.

 

[CyberPitz]

My bad.

 

[kupocake]

It's ok guys, only the dinosaurs with souls weighed down by gravity died. The rest had already migrated to space.

 

[Robbo]

I thought that everyone believed that it was a series of events that caused the mass extinctions not just one event.