It was spring and the flowers bloomed when the end of their season came dinosaurs. This is, at least, the romantic and at the same time sad conclusion of a new European scientific study, which for the first time makes an estimate of the specific time of year that fell to Earth, about 66 million years ago, the big asteroid which led to the disappearance of almost all the rulers of the planet until then.
Researchers from Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Britain, led by Melanie During The University of Uppsala, published in the journal Nature, estimates that the Chicxulub asteroid struck off the Yucatan Peninsula in present-day Mexico when it was spring in the northern hemisphere.
The cataclysmic event is estimated to have caused a mass extinction of speciesabout 76% or three quarters of all living on Earth.
Among the victims were non-flying dinosaurs, pterosaurs, ammonites and most marine reptiles, while the survivors mamals (for which the way was now open for them to dominate later), birds, crocodiles and turtles, is relayed by APE BPE.
The course and methodology of the research
To date the impact determination had focused on the chronological accuracy of the event with deviations of the scale of a few thousand years, but the time of year was unknown. The researchers studied for the first time fish remains who died en masse that day and were found in North Dakota, USA, analyzing – with the help of high-resolution X-ray tomography at the European Co-accelerator (ESRF) – the growth patterns imprinted on fossilized bones their.
Combined with data analysis of carbon isotopes in fish bones, the “verdict” was that the catastrophe came in the spring.
Among other things, the impact of the big meteorite caused huge waves in the seas, lakes and rivers, burying many fish alive. The fish had fragments from the impact inside their gills, but not lower in their digestive system, which is indication that their death was almost instantaneous and occurred less than an hour after the collision.
The fall of the asteroid in the spring – if confirmed – would coincide with a particularly sensitive stage for many species that reproduced and were developing at that time of year, which would have contributed to the subsequent mass extinction.
On the other hand, the species of the southern hemisphere, where autumn would then exist, then appear to they recovered at twice the speed of the northern hemisphere, according to the researchers.
Source: News Beast
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