• Question: how do we know a meteor killed the dinoaurs

    Asked by anon-225677 to Sameed, Jose, joannabarstow, Heidi, Freya, Chris on 13 Nov 2019. This question was also asked by anon-226293.
    • Photo: Joanna Barstow

      Joanna Barstow answered on 13 Nov 2019:

      In rocks that correspond to the point where dinosaurs disappear from the fossil record, there is evidence of a catastrophic event having caused melting and structural changes. There is also a large impact crater (the Chicxulub crater) in Mexico, which is the right age to have been responsible for the extinction and changes to the rocks. To make a crater that large, the meteor must have been several tens of kilometres across.

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